254 



THE HUNTER'S ARCADIA. 



grand opportunity of learning some of the charac- 

 teristics of each race. 



Both species were an excellent audience, but they 

 conducted themselves differently ; for the first-men- 

 tioned stared, blinked their eyes, made faces, relieving 

 the monotony of this programme by an occasional 

 hurried scratch of their flanks or underneath their 

 arm-pits, the more juvenile ones not unfrequently 

 without ceremony (for this race does not seem to be 

 respecters of age) crowding their elders to one side 

 to make room for themselves ; or, when this effort 

 was ineffective, pulling a senior's tail with sufficient 

 force to show that they had not much veneration for 

 that graceful appendage. 



The rock rabbits, on the other hand, were more 

 phlegmatic spectators, only occasionally expressing 

 approbation by the utterance of a gentle note, not 

 unlike that of a pleased guinea-pig, or turning 

 solemnly to their next neighbour with an inquiring 

 expression depicted in their eyes, as much as to 

 say, "What do you think of that, now?" The 

 klip-das is unquestionably the Dutch burgomaster 

 of the quadruped creation, being undemonstrative, 

 rotund, indisposed to exertion, with a certain formality 



