But this week Captain Brocklehurst, late Game Warden of Sudan, has written to "The Times" begging that no more pandas be brought home. He quotes from an article by Mr. Arthur Sowerby dwelling on the rarity of pandas, the extreme difficulty only a few years ago of even sighting one, and the fear that if the Chinese of Western Szechuen get the idea that there is a market for them they will soon be wiped out.
Major Tangier Smith, who brought back the five pandas to the Zoo, scoffs at this fear. He declares that there are "something like 400,000 pandas in the Wassu country and less than 50 have been caught or killed in the past 20 years." The country they live in is so rugged and dangerous as to be quite sufficient protection. It took Major Tangier Smith three years to catch his five and before he had done so he had to cable home to the Zoo for more money. So perhaps the pandas are fairly safe from extermination. Major Tangier Smith has been on the sick list for some weeks but is better. When quite well he is going back to China to do more hunting.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.