ANTELOPES 107 



ting-point at the time of the first construction of the 

 Selati Railway, from 1892 to 1894, when the bush was 

 filled with men armed with guns ; and trucks, piled high 

 with carcasses, were almost daily dispatched down the 

 line. Thence to the outbreak of the war, Europeans 

 during the winter, and natives all the year round, con- 

 tinued to take heavy toll, and during that period itself, 

 first Boer commandos, and later the irregular British 

 corps established in the low country, were unremitting 

 in their happily vain attempts to exterminate the animals. 

 At the present time, with all shooting stopped and their 

 natural enemies kept within proper bounds, impala are 

 increasing in a manner truly marvellous, and spreading 

 far beyond the limits to which they confined themselves 

 seven or eight years ago. 



CHAPTER XII 



ANTELOPES (continued) 

 Springbuck and other Gazelles : Duikers 



THE SPRINGBUCK. This, the most typical member of 

 the high veld fauna of South Africa, is the only repre- 

 sentative of the gazelle group which is found in the 

 sub-continent. It has the peculiar face markings charac- 

 teristic of all the other African species, and, as with them, 

 the females are provided with horns ; but it is dis- 

 tinguished by having five, instead of six, pairs of cheek- 

 teeth in the lower jaw, and a deep fold of skin in the middle 

 of the hinder half of the back, lined with white hairs 

 some six inches long. Under ordinary circumstances 

 these hairs lie flat along the back, but at the will of the 

 animal the flap of skin can be partially turned inside out, 

 when the hairs stand up straight and spread out like a fan. 



