378 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



merely a case of difference of observation, doubtless both 

 accurate. As regards wildebeest, our experience was iden- 

 tical with Captain Stigand's, who says that they inhabit 

 open plains exclusively and are never seen in bush country; 

 but the French hunter M. Vasse particularly mentions that 

 in Portuguese East Africa, although they live in the vast, 

 bare plains they spend the hot hours in the small thorn 

 woods — a habit we never observed in East Africa, where the 

 wildebeest herds never left the plains, lying in them during 

 the hot hours. Along or near the edges of these bare plains 

 hartebeest may be found grazing in company with water- 

 buck and impalla; if alarmed the latter will make for the 

 timber, and the kongoni for the open; but we have occasion- 

 ally found each species spending hours in the haunts of the 

 other. In the Lado the waterbuck, kob, and hartebeest 

 were ordinarily found in precisely the same localities and 

 often associating together. 



Normally, however, the hartebeest is found on the bare 

 plains, associating intimately with the other plains-dwellers 

 mentioned above. Its habits are so nearly identical with 

 those of the zebra that the two animals habitually mix in the 

 same herd. Where both species are numerous, such mixed 

 herds are almost as common as herds composed exclusively 

 of only one or the other species. Wildebeest and gazelle 

 may be found in the same herd with either zebra or 

 hartebeest. Sometimes such a mixed herd will consist of 

 numbers of every species — say a score of zebra, as many 

 hartebeest, and a dozen wildebeest — sometimes a single in- 

 dividual of one kind will go with a herd of another kind, a 

 wildebeest with zebra, a hartebeest with a wildebeest herd, a 

 beautiful Grant gazelle with a mass of zebra, wildebeest. 



