88o 



two hours, lost in astonishment at the novel and wonderful scene before me and had 

 some difficulty in convincing myself that it was a reality which I beheld, not the wild 

 and exaggerated picture of a hunter's dream. During this time, these vast legions 

 continued streaming through the neck of the hills in one unbroken phalanx, 

 on the same writer continues that, " on our climbing the low range of hills through 

 which the springboks had been pouring, I beheld the plains and even the hillsides 

 which stretched away on every side of me thickly covered, not with herds, but with 

 one vast mass of springboks; as far as the eye could strain, the landscape was alive 

 with them until they softened down into a dim red mass of living creatures, 

 endeavor to form any idea of the amount of antelopes which I had that day beheld 

 was vain- but I have no hesitation in saying that some hundreds of thousands were 

 within the compass of my vision." Vast, however, as must have been the numbers 



DORCAS OAZETXE. 



on this occasion, the Boers informed the narrator that they were nothing to those 

 that had been witnessed in some trekbokken, when the animals extended over a suc- 

 cession of flats, instead of being confined to one alone, and were crowded together like 

 sheep in a fold throughout a long day's journey, as far as the eye can reach. So 

 dense are the moving masses that if a flock of sheep becomes intermingled with the 

 herd they are swept along without hope of escape; and it is said that even the lion 

 may be thus entrapped. Livingstone suggests that these migrations are due to the 

 grass in the Kalahari desert becoming so tall as to impede the sprinkbok from obtain- 

 ing a clear view of the surrounding country. 



The Dorcas gazelle (G. donas'), as shown in above cut, may be 

 'taken as the representative of a group in which the white of the rump 

 does not encroach on the fawn color of the haunches, while both sexes have lyrate 



Dorcas Gazelle, 



