. Illustrated natural history : comprising descriptions of animals, birds, fishes, reptiles, insects, etc., with sketches of their peculiar habits and characteristics . Zoology. lU VERTEBRATES. ovev, but takes a tremendous leap, ten or twelve feet higt, and about fifteen long, at the same time curving its back in a most extraordinary manner. It is from tbis habit of leaping that the Dutch Boers vrho inhabit the Cape have given it the name of Springbok. Dr. Gumming thus describes a herd of these animals: "On the 28th I had the satisfaction of beholding, for the first time, what I had often
. Illustrated natural history : comprising descriptions of animals, birds, fishes, reptiles, insects, etc., with sketches of their peculiar habits and characteristics . Zoology. lU VERTEBRATES. ovev, but takes a tremendous leap, ten or twelve feet higt, and about fifteen long, at the same time curving its back in a most extraordinary manner. It is from tbis habit of leaping that the Dutch Boers vrho inhabit the Cape have given it the name of Springbok. Dr. Gumming thus describes a herd of these animals: "On the 28th I had the satisfaction of beholding, for the first time, what I had often heard the Boers allude to, viz. a ' trek-bokken,' or grand migration of springboks. This was, I think, the most extraordinary and striking scene, as connected with beasts of the chase, that I have ever beheld. For about two hours before the day dawned I had been lying awake in my wagon, listening to the grunting of the bucks within two hundred yards of me, imagining that some large herd of springboks was feeding beside my camp; but on my rising when it was clear, and looking about me, I beheld the ground to the northward of my camp actually covered with a dense living mass of springboks, marching slowly and steadily along, extending from an opening in a long range of hills on the west, through which they continued pouring, like the flood of some great river, to a ridge about a mile to the north-east, over which they disappeared. The breadth of the ground they covered might have been somewhere about half a mile. I stood upon the fore-chest of my wagon for nearly two hours, lost in wonder at the novel and wonderful scene which was passing before me, and had some difficulty in convincing my- self that it was reality which I beheld, and not the wild and exag- gerated picture of a hunter's dream. During this time their vast legions cflntinued streaming through the neck in the hills in one unbroken compact phalanx. " Vast and surprising as was the herd of springboks which T had
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectzoology, bookyear1883
