LIONS APPROACHING GAME 17 



that they themselves have not been observed, will 

 often lie flat on the ground watching, and will not 

 move until very closely approached. I imagine 

 that these carnivora secure nearly all their prey 

 by approaching herds of game below the wind, 

 and when they have got pretty near lying flat on 

 the ground, perfectly motionless except for the 

 twitching of the end of their tails, which they never 

 seem able to control, and then waiting till one or 

 other of the unsuspecting animals feeds close up 

 to them, when they rush upon and seize it before 

 it has time to turn. If a lion, however, fails to 

 make good his hold with one of his forepaws over 

 the muzzle of a buffalo or one of the heavier 

 antelopes, and cannot fix his teeth in their throats 

 or necks, they often manage to throw him off and 

 escape. 



It is perhaps worthy of remark that I have 

 never known a case of one of the larger antelopes 

 trying to escape observation by lying down. 

 Gemsbucks, roan and sable antelopes, elands, 

 koodoos, hartebeests, indeed all the large African 

 antelopes, directly they see anything suspicious, 

 face towards it, and stand looking at it, holding 

 their heads high, and not in any way shielding 

 their bodies and only exposing their faces to view, 

 which, when marked with black and white, as in 

 the case of the gemsbuck and roan antelope, are 

 supposed, though quite erroneously, to render these 

 animals invisible. 



I am inclined to think, but it is only my personal 

 opinion, that the difficulty of seeing wild animals in 

 their natural surroundings has been greatly ex- 

 aggerated by travellers who were not hunters, 

 and whose eyesight therefore, although of normal 

 strength, had not been trained by practice to see 

 animals quickly in every kind of environment. 



I am quite sure that to a South-African Bushman 



c 



