The Large Game and Natural History of South and South-East Africa

First edition. Demy 8vo; original black-ruled cloth with gilt buffalo head device to upper board; rebacked in olive-green morocco with gilt-on-black label to spine; new endpapers; pp. xxi + (i) + 428; chromolithograph frontis. and title page vignette; plates; line drawings in text; map in colours.  Extremities rubbed and bumped; moderate foxing; occasional fox spot.  Good to very good condition.  (Czech, p. 85; Mendelssohn I, p. 487; Hosken, p. 62) 

'The author spent five years at the Cape (1867-72), mainly in Tongaland, Zululand, and Swaziland, and details his experiences in nine chapters, which deal with buffalo, rhinoceros, eland, lions, elephants, leopards, and antelopes, and articles are devoted to a description of "Hunting with Dogs," and of the "Game Birds" of the country.  The incidents of the chase, together with accounts of the animals, are all carefully indexed under the above headings, but the author asserts that he knows "little or nothing ... about natural history as a science," and therefore has excluded everything that did not come within his personal knowledge.  The illustrations were executed from rough sketches supplied to Mr. Edward Hodges by Mr. Drummond, and consist of a number of excellent coloured prints and other engravings.  There is an Appendix giving the English or Dutch, native and scientific name of the mammals and birds, and a sketch map of the countries of the Amazulu, Amatonga, and Amaswazi.' - Mendelssohn.  'Though he bagged a number of elephant, he was concerned that continued hunting would extirpate the animal "merely for the purpose of supplying Europe with ivory ornaments and billiard-balls ... " '- Czech: An Annotated Bibliography of African Big Game Hunting Books 1785-1999

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