WILDEBEEST AND HARTEBEEST 387 



herd is protected purely by the spontaneous individual 

 vigilance of its members, each exercising the vigilance on 

 its own account and for its own safety; but of course fuller 

 observation may show that this is not the case, and that 

 different animals do take up in succession the function of 

 sentinels for the guardianship of their fellows. 



As we have already said, there are the widest differences 

 of conduct among individuals of all the species of game, 

 and this is true, among other things, of their wariness, both 

 as between all the individuals of one locality and all those 

 of another, as among individuals of the same locality, and 

 as between an individual at one time and at another, even 

 on the same day. We have passed by herds of game which 

 let us come within easy range of them, although they were 

 to leeward of us, without moving; and on another day, 

 or even on the same day, have had them flee in panic and 

 terror at sight of us a quarter of a mile off, or on getting 

 the wind of us at a like distance. In most of the portions 

 of Africa through which we hunted, the beasts of prey ex- 

 acted a much heavier toll of life from the game than did 

 the white hunters; and they were in far greater and more 

 continuous dread of the lion than of the rifle-bearer. In 

 other words, in most places the game lived under substan- 

 tially natural conditions; there were only a few species 

 which had materially diminished in numbers over a con- 

 siderable area because of the incoming of the white man or 

 which, because of his presence, had materially changed their 

 habits. The hartebeest and zebra, for instance, were just as 

 they always had been. They as often from folly blundered 

 into the power of the lion, as into the power of the hunter. 

 In the daytime they often showed the same curious disre- 



