160 HISTORY OF 



these to pursue, are not so great as the tricks of 

 their prey to escape ; so that the power of des- 

 truction in one class, is inferior to the power of 

 safety in the other. Were this otherwise, the 

 forest would soon be dispeopled of the feebler 

 races of animals, and beasts of prey themselves 

 would want at one time that subsistence which 

 they lavishly destroyed at another. 



Few wild animals seek their prey in the day- 

 time ; they are then generally deterred by their 

 fears of man in the inhabited countries, and by 

 the excessive heat of the sun in those extensive 

 forests that lie towards the south, and in which 

 they reign the undisputed tyrants. As soon as 

 the morning, therefore, appears, the carnivorous 

 animals retire to their dens ; and the elephant, 

 the horse, the deer, and all the hare kinds, those 

 inoffensive tenants of the plain, make their ap- 

 pearance. But again, at night-fall, the state of 

 hostility begins ; the whole forest then echoes to 

 a variety of different bowlings. Nothing can be 

 more terrible than an African landscape at the 

 close of evening : the deep-toned roarings of the 

 lion ; the shriller yellings of the tiger ; the jack- 

 all, pursuing by the scent, and barking like a dog ; 

 the hyaena, with a note peculiarly solitary and 

 dreadful ; but above all, the hissing of the various 

 kinds of serpents, that then begin their call, and, 

 as I am assured, make a much louder symphony 

 than the birds in our groves in a morning. 



Beasts of prey seldom devour each other ; nor 

 can any thing but the greatest degree of hunger 

 induce them to it. What they chiefly seek after 



