SPRING-BOK.—Antidorcas Buchore. 
rising to a height of seven or eight feet without any difficulty, and being capable on 
occasions of reaching to a height of twelve or thirteen feet. When leaping, the back is 
greatly curved, and the creature presents a very curious aspect, owing to the sudden 
exhibition of the long white hairs that cover the croup, and are nearly hidden by a fold 
of skin when the creature is at rest, but which come boldly into view as soon as the 
protecting skin-fold is obliterated by the tension of the muscles that serve to propel the 
animal in its aérial course. 
The Spring-bok is a marvellously timid animal, and will never cross a road if it can 
avoid the necessity. When it is forced to do so, it often compromises the difficulty by 
leaping over the spot which has been tainted by the foot of man. The colour of the 
Spring-bok is very pleasing, the ground tinting being a warm cinnamon-brown upon the 
upper surface of the body, and pure white upon the abdomen, the two colours being 
separated from each other by a broad band of reddish-brown, The flesh of the 
Spring-bok is held in some estimation, and the hide is in great request for many useful 
purposes. 
Inhabiting the vast plains of Southern Africa, the Spring-bok is accustomed to make 
pilgrimages fron one spot to another, vast herds being led by their chiefs, and ravaging 
the country over which they pass as if they were quadrupedal and mammalian locusts. 
Thousands upon thousands unite in these strange pilgrimages, or “trek-bokken,” as they 
are called by the Boers, and some faint idea of the moving multitudes that traverse the 
country may be obtained from the following description, written by Captain Cumming 
immediately after witnessing one of these migrations. 
“For about two hours before the day dawned, I had been lying awake in my wagon, 
listening to the grunting of the bucks within two hundred yards ‘of me, imagining that 
some large herd of Spring-boks was feeding beside my camp. But on my rising when it 
was clear, and looking about me, I beheld the ground to the northward of my camp 
actually covered with a dense living mass of Spring-bok s, marching slowly and steadily 
along, extending from an opening in a long range of hills on the “west, through which 
they continued pouring like the flood of some great river, to a ridge about a mile to the 
east, over which they disappeared. The breadth of the ground they covered might have 
been somewhere about half a mile, 
