ART. 17 EAST AFRICAN VEETEBRATES LOVERIDGE 21 



being eaten. Holding the bird in its claws the leopard would remove 

 mouthful after mouthful of feathers which would be laid in a neat 

 pile similar to others composed of bustard's feathers which I saw in 

 the bush at Saranda. Similarly if given a whole dikdik the stomach 

 and entrails would be removed and laid on one side. Curiously 

 enough, while bush fowl were relished, duck would not be touched by 

 any of the leopards, which were presumably unacquainted with them. 

 One fine male, taken at Kikuyu, refused both monkey and baboon, 

 but this was certainly a personal idiosyncrasy not shared by his com- 

 panions in captivity. A dead python cut in half was also rejected 

 by the two leopards to which the pieces were offered. 



While staying at Nzingi station one of our boys reported seeing 

 two leopards at daybreak as they trotted down the line. Local 

 natives said it was a daily occurrence, as they came to drink at a 

 water hole close to the station. At Kilamatinde I saw one in the 

 road one morning, and at 3 o'clock on Sunday afternoon a pack of 

 baboons on the hillside opposite the "boma" gave tongue and acted 

 as if they had been molested by one. In the same way, but at 

 9 o'clock in the evening, guenons raised an outcry in the trees at the 

 back of the house at Saranda where leopards were quite a pest. The 

 second night I was there, one carried off a calf out of a shed, the little 

 creature had only been born that afternoon. Mr. Robbie pointed 

 out the skeleton of another calf hanging in the fork of a tree at a 

 height of 20 feet from the ground and perhaps 50 yards from the 

 cow shed. In that instance Mr. Robbie set a gun trap at the foot 

 of the tree, thereafter the leopard's skin adorned Mr. Robbie's house 

 and the calf's carcass was left in the tree. 



FBLIS CAPENSIS HINDEI Wroughton 



EAST AFRICAN SERVAI 



Native names. — NzuU (Chigogo); Kizonga (Kiswahili). 



Seven servals in all were received by the expedition. Two of 

 these were adults, gin trapped by natives close to Dodoma. Three 

 were kittens, of which one came from Kizumbi, near Shiny anga; 

 another from Arusha was presented by Mr. Montague of the game 

 department, and the third was bought at Kondoa Irangi. All were 

 about the same size and were received during July and August, but 

 while the Kizumbi and Kondoa animals might be freely handled and 

 were allowed to run loose about the camp, the Arusha serval was 

 irascibility personified, spitting and slapping with extended claws at 

 anyone approaching. 



It was an amusing sight to see these kittens wrestling with their 

 milk bottles — ordinary liquor bottles fitted with a teat. Standing 

 on their hind legs, each with its forepaws around the bottle's neck, 

 they w^ould growl and struggle w^th the teat most ferociously. On 



