Game Without Guns
The Overloaded Ark. By Gerald M. Durrell. (Faber and Faber.
Animal Heaven. By Alastair Scobie. (Cassell. 25s.) South African Eden. By Lieut.-Col. J. Stevenson-Hamilton. (Cassell.
25s.) A Wanderer in the Wind. By Cecil S. Webb. (Hutchinson. 21s.)
BooKs about wild animals seem now to be characterised by a new and refreshing level of realism. This as far temoved from the clamour and clichés of the Wide Wonders as it is from the backward leaning of decent chaps who seem concerned only to prove that you can strike matches on the rear parts of what their predecessors presum- ably would have called Ravenous Beasts. The pendulum has swung between the two extremes and it is to be hoped that it stays there. All these books are by men who have spent varying amounts of time in Africa. They are all unpretentious works. They are non-tech- nical in the sense that none of the authors is concerned about baffling his readers with paradoxical gobbets of zoological fact, and the air of pleasant modesty which pervades all of them suggests that the proximity of beasts really has an ameliorating effect on that hairless and rather bitter little biped called man.
Durrell went to the rain forest of the Cameroons to make money by collecting animals for zoos and also, he says, to see something of one of the few remaining uncivilised parts of the continent. He seems to be a man of remarkable endurance and describes vividly how he put his hand into caves and crannies to pull out beasts which might be anything from pythons to porcupines and usually were. Un- doubtedly his finest descriptive pieces are about hunting expeditions in the wet forests at night where, apparently, a variety of animals can be picked off trees and stuffed into sacks by those who are prepared to be bitten, scratched and generally mauled about for what the author says is pleasure and a little profit.
The next book is by Alastair Scobie, a skilful phrase-smith who has lapped up the colour of East African bars and more natural water-holes in sixteen chapters ranging from the technique of medicine- manship to a glorious company called "The Professional Hunters Association of East Africa." These men, the famous White Hunters of films and other forms of fancy, are described as those who "must entertain, amuse and shepherd men and women who have often run whole gamut of experiences (which) wealth and leisure can bring and (who) then come to Africa as a Last Resort." The final capitals are mine. Scobie is more respectful for he has hunted with these men, with a camera, and it is to his credit that he makes their life and his entirely credible. Colonel Stevenson-Hamilton is a man of more austere character. The tale which he tells, simply, is of the Sabi Game Reserve which became eventually the Kruger National Park. There is something of the" official "narrative in this account for the colonel was a warden of that great enterprise. Yet whatever defects lie in the historical tone, they are offset entirely by what can be described only as his vision and diplomacy. He had to deal mainly with unsympathetic legislators and relatively unintelligent animals—unintelligent in the sense that beasts have to accustom themselves to unnatural con- ditions within the reserves. Today, the Kruger Park is in no small way his accomplishment and members of fauna preservation societies and others should be made to read how it can be done.
Cecil Webb, that veteran collector of animals, has written an amiable autobiography which should prove either the despair or the inspiration of those who hanker after a profitable life in the same field. His charm and unfailing urbanity are in themselves a reproach to those querulous fellows and their officials who are not prepared to admit why animals are locked up behind bars. Webb's life, as the blurb says, has, indeed, been an odyssey and the book is heartily recommended for a dull afternoon in places such as Regent's Park.
JOHN D. HILLARY.
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