ANIMAL LIFE OF THE COUNTRY. 29 



months. During this time every hollow, dip, and valley in the country is practically 

 under water. During the remainder of the year there is no rain and the country 

 becomes parched and dry, the grass is long since dead, and the grazing is of the 

 poorest, so that the grass-feeding game have to subsist for months on the long, rank, 

 dead grass. 



In barren countries, like Somaliland and Southern and Eastern Abyssinia, the 

 state of things is still worse, as the rainy season lasts but a brief while. 



So the great feature of the East African highland pasturages is the luxuriancy of 

 its grazing during the whole year, with but brief Intervals. The grass here does not 

 grow long and rank as in other parts, and during a great part of the year there 

 are fresh and green grasses, and clovers. The immediate outcome of this state 

 of things is that an enormous amount of game can support themselves on a 

 comparatively small area. Another result of this abundance of grazing is that 

 animals need never graze over any very extended area to eat their fill, neither is it 

 expedient for them to leave their own pasturage to go to another where they will 

 find other herds already in possession. In these rich uplands there is hardly such a 

 thing as searching for food, although at the end of a dry season animals must 

 necessarily walk a little farther and in places change grazing grounds so as to be 

 near water. This engenders lazy habits in the game of the country, and so makes 

 them very local in their habits. Animals may be found, day after day, in exactly the 

 same locality and grazing over the same ground and drinking from the same 

 water-hole. 



Very different is the state of things in such poor pasturages as Nyasaland and 

 North-Eastern Rhodesia, where game must graze over an enormous area to get their 

 day's fill. Thus, they are always on the move and are scarcely ever found twice in 

 the same spot. Their habits are of the more energetic, wandering type, and they 

 hardly ever return on two consecutive days to the same ground, and certainly never 

 drink from the same place or use the same lying-up spot twice running. So if you see 

 an animal in a certain place one day it is not worth while returning there to look for 

 him on another day. On the contrary, if you once disturb him in a certain spot you 

 might search the whole country side for him, but would never trouble to return to 

 look for him again in the place from which he was frightened. In highland East 

 Africa, however, if you see an animal in a certain place at a particular time, or 

 even if you frighten him away from it, you will know where to look for him 

 again on the morrow or the next day. Even in the less-favoured lowland grazing 

 grounds game has a great tendency to become local in its habits, though, of 

 course, not to so marked a degree. This local tendency of the game makes the 



