Excerpt from Central African Game and Its Spoor This handbook is intended as a help or guide to the young or inexperienced sportsman who intends making a hunting trip to Central Africa. Spoor cannot be put on paper to exactly resemble the real thing. In drawing these spoor the outlines have been well defined, and it must be noted that they are taken from picked specimens (distinct impressions in the soil). As may be surmised the finding and sketching of these spoor and dung has cost not a little time and trouble, and in the case of the lesser known or scarcer animals much questioning of native hunters before the information has been deemed reliable enough to be put on paper. It will take months, and perhaps years, of hard experience to tell at a glance to what animal a footprint belongs, and the authors themselves have often felt the want of some fairly reliable handbook while in the field, especially on going to a new country and meeting with species they have not seen before. Before one can question a native a certain knowledge of the language is necessary, and this in itself takes much study. The authors, therefore, have given the native names of the different game. Many of the ideas and conclusions put forward by the authors may not meet with the approval of perhaps older and more experienced sportsmen, but at the same time they are the result of experience. And differences of Opinion concerning the habits of animals arise between most sportsmen, no two holding exactly the same views. It will be noticed that the words generally, often, or usually are of frequent occurrence in describing the habits of animals. We think it the greatest mistake to say that any animal will do this or that. As the behaviour of no two animals is any more alike than that of two human beings. Moreover the same animal may have totally different habits in different localities. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.