PHASES OF NATURE AROUND PRETORIA. 55 



length came upon their haunts, and, strange to say, a 

 frog was the first animal seen impaled. I afterwards 

 found that small lizards were very common victims, and 

 the black-and-white shrike (Lanius collaris), the most 

 abundant species in our neighbourhood, was as fearless 

 as it was predatory. I once followed one of these birds 

 amongst some trees to see what it held in its beak, and 

 approached close to the shrike before it took flight, when, 

 after impaling a large mole-cricket close before my eyes, 

 it flew away to another tree in the vicinity. But nature is 

 "red in tooth and claw"; the small clump of shrubs 

 that bore these impaled lizards were visited by numbers 

 of the previously mentioned weevils, many of which 

 fell victims to the numerous spiders that inhabited 

 cocoon-like structures and spread their webs across the 

 ends of the small branches. Accidents also happen to 

 all living things alike. I once saw a weevil (Polyclaeis 

 cinereis), when suddenly alighting from flight on the 

 stems of an acacia, run a spine through one of its 

 underwings and hang suspended. I liberated this 

 unfortunate after watching its ineffectual struggles 

 for some time, and if it had eventually extricated 

 itself from the thorn, it could only have done so at the 

 expense of a mutilated wing. On a subsequent occasion 

 I saw a migratory locust strike in its flight the barbed 

 wire used in fencing, and impale itself by driving a 

 spike through the front part of its head. These un- 

 toward events occur much more frequently than we 

 suppose ; man has not a monopoly of the miseries of 

 life. Amongst the Vertebrata, if the sportsman or 

 naturalist examined the skeletons of his prizes, he 

 would occasionally find the traces of past fractures and 

 dislocations ; and even amongst insects this can be 

 discerned, but usually, or most clearly, in the large 

 Orthoptera, whose long limbs are particularly liable to 

 the accidents of field and flood, and the size of which 

 renders the marks of these misadventures more visible 

 than is the case among smaller insects. 



Many birds of prey visit the immediate neighbourhood 

 of Pretoria, and are a considerable danger to young 



