140 NATURAL HISTORY. 



less plains, and even the hill sides which stretched away on 

 every side of me, thickly covered, not with herds, but with 

 one vast herd 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." 



The Springbok is very fearful of man, and if it has to cross 

 a path over which a man has passed before, it does not walk 

 over, but takes a tremendous leap, ten or twelve feet high, 

 and about fifteen long, at the same time curving its back in a 

 most extraordinary manner. It is from this habit of leaping 

 that the Dutch Boers who inhabit the Cape have given it the 

 name of Springbok. 



Ariel (Gr. proper name], the Gazelle. 



The GAZELLE, so famous in Oriental poetry, inhabits Arabia 

 and Syria. Its eyes are very large, dark, and lustrous, so that 

 the Oriental poets love to compare the eyes of a woman to 

 those of a gazelle, just as Homer constantly applied the 



