chap. ix. GAME BIRDS. 411 



ing from four to six pounds, the cocks, especially, having 

 very fine plumage, and they are easily identified by the 

 unscientific observer by their all having but three toes. In 

 favourite places — and such places are to be found where- 

 ever one may go — they are very numerous, and with a 

 good dog one may kill from seven to ten brace during the 

 heat of the day. At early dawn and evening they may 

 be heard uttering the cry from which they take then- 

 name, and are then to be seen moving* about over the 

 plains in search of food ; but at such times they are next 

 to impossible to approach, as their long necks give them 

 every advantage in observing coming danger, and they 

 will run like greyhounds for several hundred yards, and 

 then rise wild ; but under the mid-day sun they become 

 quite another bird ; you may then walk over them, and if 

 you do not absolutely tread upon them they will not rise, 

 and this renders it impossible to find them without the 

 assistance of a dog, the grass being so long and the 

 ground to be beaten so extensive that it is otherwise the 

 merest chance if one is stumbled upon. They are not 

 difficult to kill, being slow flyers, and offering a large and 

 easy mark, but anything under No. 4 shot would be of 

 little use, and I should recommend and personally have 

 always used No. 3. For the table they are unexception- 

 able, though, like other birds of the genus, they improve 

 by keeping, — a thing not, however, veiy easy to accomplish, 

 even in the so-called cold weather, in a tropical land. 

 The most common and widely spread is B. afra, the Otis 

 afra of Linnaeus, and in the bush-country Otis melangaster, 

 a handsome black-and-white bird, while on the up-country 

 plains Otis torquata is more usually to be seen. 



