VARIETIES OF LEOPARDS AND 

 WEIGHT OF LIONS. 



It is pleasant — more so, I may say delightful — to 

 come across a name with which you have at one 

 time been familiar. It is like the voice of a friend 

 calling to you from the Spirit Land, where, alas ! so 

 many of my old hunting friends have a long time 

 since been paraded. 



An ex-elephant hunter — who writes to me on the 

 subject of the heading — and his brother were long 

 prominent lights among that small band of adven- 

 turers, whose corps was headed by the gallant Sir ' 

 Cornwallis Harris, soon after followed by that 

 bravest and most reckless of dare-devils, Gordon 

 Gumming. Bechuana Land and the Matabele 

 country were in their time unknown lands, in- 

 habited by fierce, wily, and treacherous savages, 

 whose assegais and knob-kerries were against every 

 stranger, black or white, who trespassed within the 

 limits of their demesne. Firearms were unknown 

 in those days by the aborigines, so the wild game 

 wandered about in a state of untrammelled freedom, 

 and in such uncountable numbers that to enumerate 

 them would be almost as difficult as a friend of mine 

 states in an original couplet : — 



Count me every leaflet green in some deep forest to be seen ; 

 Count me every grain of sand that wild waves wash upon the 

 strand. 



The game is gene now, or exists in very much re- 



