MY SOMALI BOOK 133 



and only making a dying effort, and expected the 

 Somalis to catch him up and knock him on the head 

 directly. But if he was dying he was in no immediate 

 hurry about it, and increased his lead until, after a 

 chase of about a mile, by which time it was getting 

 dark, he got clear away. Looking back, there was a 

 distinct comic element in the affair, but it was an awful 

 sell ! I was so certain that he was done for ; though 

 I might have taken warning from the episode of my 

 first black-buck in India years before, which escaped 

 me after I had spanned the length of his horns with 

 my fingers as he lay temporarily stunned by a bullet 

 that had grazed the spinal cord. At any rate the ques- 

 tion of Somajesti's identity was solved, ho was un- 

 doubtedly an aard-wolf, to whose insignificant teeth 

 I need not have given a thought, but I did not re- 

 member that in time. 



Of course the aard-wolf is not a woh at all, nor any 

 relation, its name (signifying earth-wolf from its habit 

 of living in burrows) being one of a number of mis- 

 nomers that we have adopted from the Boers. The 

 most notable of these is " eland," which is simply 

 Dutch for " elk," a very different animal from the 

 great antelope to which we now apply the title. 

 But the early Dutch Colonists were not naturalists, 

 and the misnomer is no more flagrant than the title 

 too often given to the Indian gazelle of ravine 

 " deer." 



More than one writer gives the Somali name of the 

 aard-wolf as shamhel instead of somajesii, the only 

 name I heard for this animal. When I questioned 

 Abdilleh on this point he said shambel was a synonym 



