8 NA.TUBAL HISTOEY SKETCHES. 



sight, hearing, and smell are most acute. Like the hare, 

 they appear unable to sec an object directly in front of 

 them when running, at least I have often stood still and 

 shot one down as it came running straight up to me in 

 the open forest. It is not a ruminating animal, and the 

 four long front teeth, two in each jaw, are sharp, flat, 

 and double-edged, peculiarly adapted for cutting or 

 browsing ; and the thick blunt crushing molars betoken 

 a purely herbivorous animal. They are very gregarious, 

 and are always to be met with in smaller or larger 

 droves. I have often seen as many as a hundred and 

 fifty in a drove, and our general mobs used to average 

 fifty or sixty. After the rutting season, the old men will 

 often draw away from the mobs and retire bv themselves 

 to the thickest scrub. Each drove frequents a certain 

 district, has its particular camping and feeding grounds. 

 The mobs do not appear to mix, and when the shooter 

 once obtains a knowledge of the country, he has no diffi- 

 culty in planting himself for a shot. Their camping- 

 grounds are generally on some open timbered rise, and 

 they have well-trodden runs from one ground to another. 

 They feed early in the morning and at twilight, and I 

 think also much by night. I fancy we might have shot them 

 at night by a fire of dry wood lighted in a long-handled 

 frying-pan, after the manner of torch-shooting in Ame- 

 rica ; and this plan would also succeed with opossums 

 on a dark night. But the difficulty would be to find 

 the right kind of wood out here, for I know of no resi- 

 nous trees in these forests. A good bull's-eye lantern 



