lyo THE GAME OF BRITISH EAST AFRICA. 



and piping again, whilst parrots and other raucous-voiced birds screech 

 and call. 



Night is the time of activity in the forest. As dusk falls all the forest animals 

 begin stirring ; the birds only are hushed, and have all gone to roost an hour since with 

 shrill cries, hoarse screechings, and much commotion of flapping wings and hustling 

 flutters about the selection of their night perches. As night closes, the shrill 

 trilling of the hyrax begins from a thousand different places and continues without 

 cessation until dawn. The colobus croaks and other nocturnal sounds proceed from 

 the forest. Stately elephants stalk silently about with noiseless padded feet, and 

 only a breaking branch now and again or the crashing fall of some small tree broken 

 down tells of their presence, or perhaps a shrill trumpet or loud-gurgling stomatic 

 rumble denotes that one of their number is angry or pleased, as the case may be. 

 When they go down for their midnight drink it is then that they become noisy. If 

 the stream they visit is of any size their splashings, gurglings, and trumpetings wake 

 the echoes of the forest. 



The bongo and the bushbuck are busy feeding, moving from place to place by 

 their little paths broken through the undergrowth. The former is busy browsing off the 

 shoots that grow on the floor of the forest, laying his horns flat against his back and 

 stretching out his head to crouch through the undergrowth. Early in the morning a 

 party will make their way by a well-beaten path to the lone stump of a rotten tree. 

 The paths leading to and from this tree and the hoof-trodden ground about it show 

 that it is a favourite resort. They will then tear off the rotten bark and gnaw the 

 decayed pith of the tree, and afterwards will make their way down to the stream for 

 their morning drink, then back again to the dark recesses of the forest, grazing as 

 they go. Occasionally some old male will uproot a sapling so as to get at the leaves 

 or bark. This he will do by digging and levering up the roots with his massive horns. 

 Soon after dawn the herd will have reached some secluded retreat in the denser 

 undergrowth in which to pass the day. 



The forest-hog is poking and ferreting about hither and thither, grubbing up 

 roots and eating shoots and other dainties. The leopard also is busy prowling round 

 to see what he may procure. Almost anything is acceptable that comes his way, 

 though he would like best of all a baboon, a monkey, or a colobus, and, in point of 

 fact, these animals form his staple food in the forest. He is also very partial to the 

 little duiker and dikdik, which patters along the floor of the forest, or even a female 

 or young bushbuck if he can catch one. I do not think he often tackles an adult 

 male bushbuck, for this buck is very handy with its horns, and has, moreover, plenty 

 of spirit. When the above-mentioned dainties fail, the leopard has then to fill 



