292 



UNGULATES. 



time, these vast legions continued streaming through the neck of the hills in one 

 unbroken phalanx." Later on the same writer continues that, " on our climbing the 

 low range of hills through which the springboks had been pouring, I beheld the 

 plains and even the hillsides which stretched away on every side of me thickly 

 covered, not with herds, but with one vast mass of springboks ; as far as the eye 

 could strain, the landscape was alive with them, until they softened down into a 

 dim red mass of living creatures. To endeavour to form any idea of the amount 

 of antelopes which I had that day beheld were vain ; but I have no hesitation in 

 saying that some hundreds of thousands were within the compass of my vision." 

 Vast, however, as must have been the numbers on this occasion, the Boers informed 

 the narrator that they were nothing to those that had been witnessed in some 



DORCAS GAZELLE. 



trekbokken, when the animals extended over a succession of flats, instead of being 

 confined to one alone, and were crowded together like sheep in a fold throughout a 

 long day's journey, as far as the eye can reach. So dense are the moving masses 

 that if a flock of sheep becomes intermingled with the herd they are swept along 

 without hope of escape ; and it is said that even the lion may be thus entrapped. 

 Livingstone suggests that these migrations are due to the grass in the Kalahari 

 desert becoming so tall as to impede the springbok from obtaining a clear view of 

 the surrounding country. 



The Dorcas gazelle (G. dorcas), which is figured in our coloured 

 Plate, may be taken as the representative of a group in which the 

 white of the rump does not encroach on the fawn-colour of the haunches, while 

 both sexes have lyrate or sublyrate horns. This well-known species inhabits the 

 deserts of Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Palestine, and parts of Asia Minor. It stands barely 



Dorcas Gazelle. 



