56 ANIMAL LIFE IN AFRICA 



at various likely points, one of them mounted a large 

 rock a few yards away, directly facing the creature's 

 hiding-place. Suddenly the leopard charged out. The 

 sportsman fired, but failed to stop it, and at one bound 

 it sprang on to the rock and hurled him from it, falling 

 on top of him and mauling him to death before assistance 

 could arrive. 



Leopards sometimes show very great sagacity, not only 

 in avoiding traps set for them, but in abstracting the bait 

 without getting caught. A leopardess with two cubs, 

 on two successive nights, sprung a trap and took away 

 the meat without injury to herself. On the third, a 

 gun having in the meantime been set in addition, she 

 pulled away the thick thorn fence built at the back of 

 the kill, and dragged the latter away in safety. The 

 touch of these animals is so delicate that the least rustiness 

 of the springs of the gin spells failure, and they will avoid 

 all obviously artificial roads to the trap, and often choose 

 the most forbidding fence of thorns through which to 

 wriggle to the meat. A wounded leopard at bay appears 

 the very incarnation of ferocity ; his ears are laid back 

 low against his flat-looking head, his long white teeth 

 gleam between the withdrawn, snarling lips, while his 

 eyes, fixed with steady and sinister stare upon his enemy 

 and filled with dull greenish-red light, glare murderous 

 hate. Even when you know his back to be broken, his 

 appearance is so little assuring that you have qualms 

 about approaching close in order to give him the quiet- 

 ing shot. 



Occasional instances of apparently unprovoked attacks 

 occur. Some years ago one of the native policemen on 

 patrol was at a village in the early morning. A leopard 

 had been marked into a thicket close by, and some of the 

 women seem to have thrown doubts on the constable's 



