THE TREE DASSIE 



beholding me they ran off into the bush. They were 

 Tree Dassies. Attracted evidently by the noise, and 

 hoping to secure a meal, a Serval Cat emerged from 

 an adjacent thicket and, with a bound, was nearly 

 on top of me. I jumped up with a shout, where- 

 upon it vanished as rapidly as it had appeared. 



The Tree Dassie is a perfectly harmless animal, 

 and does not the slightest harm in any way to man, 

 and it should not, therefore, be persecuted by us. 

 It is a strange trait in human nature, this inward 

 prompting to take life, for when any creature is 

 sighted, the impulse instantly arises to shoot it, or 

 do it an injury by hurling a stick or a stone at it, 

 or incite dogs to run it down. It may be sport to 

 the hunter, but it is death to the animal. This 

 desire to destroy the lives of innocent and often 

 eminently useful creatures, is without doubt a survival 

 of the destructive instincts of our remote savage 

 ancestors when they were in, what anthropologists 

 term, the Hunter Phase of culture or evolution. 



When lying securely concealed in a dense thicket, 

 it is an interesting sight to watch a family of Tree 

 Dassies nimbly traversing the branches, pausing at 

 intervals to listen intently, for the Serval or Bush 

 Cat is an enemy the Dassie is in constant dread of, 

 for with a spring it can launch itself from the ground 

 straight up a tree trunk, or to a branch a distance of 

 8 to lo feet, and seizing its prey with its front claws 

 it drops with it to the ground. 



The Leopard, the Caracal or Lynx, the Kafir Cat, 



237 



