DROUGHT IN WATERBERG, SOUTH AFRICA—-MARAIS. 519 
oven. It seems indeed as if the desert has reached out an arm and 
taken to itself for all time this great extent of once fertile country. 
For four and a half jong hours each day in the coolest available spot 
the temperature never sank below the century. 
This terrible heat and the absence of all moisture in the atmos- 
phere has some singular effects on the human body and its immediate 
environment. The hair became so electrified that to stroke it lightly 
with the hand evoked a crackling shower of sparks. The finger-nails 
became so brittle that they were constantly breaking into the quick, 
and both the hair and nails seemed to have lost all power of growth. 
All celluloid substances were speedily broken up into thin laminae, 
and new rubber became in a few days a useless spongy mass. The 
horses’ tails swishing their sides crackled incessantly and stood out 
in disheveled bushes, each hair apparently wired. When travelling 
at night their flanks were surrounded by minature auroras of electric 
discharges. To stroke the canvas with one’s finger generated a dis- 
charge that could be felt in the hand. The big game had nearly all 
disappeared. The large herds of blue wildebeeste that frequented the 
rivers earlier in the year trekked down the Limpopo to the larger 
pools and across into Rhodesia. 
The change of habit forced upon animals by this change in their 
environment was very interesting, and in many instances remarkable. 
The first thing we noticed was that antbears, famished and unafraid, 
were walking about in broad day. This unfortunate edentate, among 
the most highly specialized of mammals as far as its food-supply is 
concerned, seemed to be in desperate straits. I had here an oppor- 
tunity of observing for the first time a baby erd-vark out hunting 
with its mother at midday. The reason that compelled this most 
nocturnal and shyest of animals to abandon so fixed a habit was imme- 
diately apparent. The termites, on which they feed exclusively, live 
only in hard soil. In the sand dunes there are none. This termite- 
infested soil was as hard as a rock, and though the erd-vark is the 
most perfect of mining machines, the hours of darkness were not 
sufficient for it to reach the nests. Hence was it driven to work in 
daylight too. Everywhere in the areas of red soil we found its 
abandoned attempts at shaft-sinking. On another occasion we found 
its cousin edentate, the armadillo, out in the morning. It was a 
female and carried a baby of a few weeks old on its back, the tails 
firmly interlocked. 
For the same compelling reason—hunger—most noctural beasts of 
prey hunted during the day as well as by night. Two leopards raided 
a small Kaffir stad in the vicinity of our camp and carried off a pig 
during the early afternoon. The unfortunate baboons apparently 
never slept at all. Weird and ungainly skeletons they were, fearless 
through starvation. In normal times no animal is more frightened 
