WHAT IS I.RARNT FROM SPOOR. 145 



a valuable guide at such points. I have often saved myself a long, worthless walk 

 simply by taking this precaution. 



For instance, let us say that a group of elephants is suddenly come upon, and 

 one big tusker is seen and fired at. There follows a wild stampede, and the wounded 

 elephant goes off among the rest. He leaves them almost immediately, and the 

 hunter finds just two drops of blood on the ground or on some leaves. He takes 

 a hurried measurement of the spoor beside which he discovers the blood. The 

 wounded elephant subsequently joins the herd again after going, perhaps, a few 

 hundred yards or so, and from there onwards not a single drop of blood is to be 

 seen anywhere. After a while the herd divides, and the hunter follows one of 

 the two groups. He comes to a soft spot where all the spoors are clearly 

 defined, and after measuring them all carefully, finds that none correspond with 

 the measurement already taken. He then knows that his elephant must be in the 

 other group and congratulates himself on his precaution. The five or ten seconds 

 wasted when he took the measurement now save him hours of fruitless following. 



To return to pachydermous spoors considered in general. The elephant, I have 

 said, cannot be mistaken for any other, but it is possible for a beginner to be in 

 doubt as to whether a rhino's spoor is that of a hippo. This point is really easily 

 solved, for a rhino has three broad toes, each leaving a track almost like a 

 zebra's hoofmark, one pointing forward and the other two on each side of it 

 facing half right and half left, whereas the hippo has four narrow toes, each 

 having a blunt claw at the end. 



Of the spoor of the smaller animals there is a class which has, as in the 

 dog class, one big pad, with four smaller pads in front, and claws or nails showing 

 in front of these. In addition to these pads, however, this class has two smaller 

 pads, one on each side and rather behind the big pad. The relative positions and 

 shapes of the pads are all also somewhat different to those of the dog and cat 

 tribes. These two extra pads denote animals such as the mongoose and the zorilla. 



There is another class that shows these two extra pads alongside of each 

 other and directly behind the big pad ; an instance of which is the ratel. 



After these come the more curiously shaped spoors, such as the three long 

 curves of the antbear and the almost human-like spoor of the crocodile, with but 

 one finger less than that of a man. With the apes and baboons there is the 

 characteristic mark of the ball of the thumb. 



In spooring, the next consideration is how to distinguish the spoor of a male 

 from that of a female. Once the two have been carefully compared together, there 

 will seldom be any dilficulty experienced afterwards, for the spoor of the female is 



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