258 HOME LIFE ON AN OSTRICH FARM. 



a snake resembling a puff-adder. According to all 

 accounts the dassie-adder, whose bite is instantly fatal, 

 is most vindictive, and, running with all the swiftness 

 of a dassie, will chase any one who comes near it. 

 Some say, too, that it goes about at night. 



The dassies, so terrible in their fictitious semi-reptile 

 state, are in real life very harmless, timid little animals. 

 They are gregarious, and live among the rocks in such 

 inaccessible places that it is most difficult to capture 

 one of them ; and a tame dassie is among the rarest 

 of Karroo pets, so securely do these "feeble folk" make 

 "their houses in the rocks." In appearance the dassie 

 is very like a little brown guinea-pig ; as regards in- 

 telligence, too, he is just about the equal of his rather 

 uninteresting piebald cousins, and, although he is as 

 pretty, soft-coated and gentle as you could wish, and 

 in I] is mild, placid way gets very tame, he is nowhere 

 in comparison with that prince of pets, a meerkat. 



A not unlikely solution of the dassie-adder mystery 

 seems to be that in all probability the puff-adders prey 

 upon the little denizens of the rocks; and a large snake 

 may occasionally have been seen with a half-swallowed 

 dassie in his mouth, just as a common snake sometimes 

 displays, protruding from his jaws, the head and fore- 

 legs of the inconveniently fat frog which he is unable 

 to gnlp down in a hurry. The negro mind is quite 

 capable of evolving a fabulous animal out of even 

 such slight grounds as this. 



Of "creepy-crawlies" of all kinds the Karroo pos- 

 sesses more than enough, and — like the snakes — they 



