THE ZooLoGisT—MAkcH, 1875. 4359 
unharmed: both men are now alive at Bambarré. The soko is so 
cunning, and has such sharp eyes, that no one can stalk him in 
front without being seen—hence when shot it is always in the back ; 
when surrounded by men and nets he is generally speared in the 
back too, otherwise he is not a very formidable beast; he is 
nothing, as compared in power of damaging an assailant, to a 
leopard or a lion, but is more like a man unarmed, for it does not 
occur to him to use his canine teeth, which are long and formidable. 
Numbers of them come down in the forest, within a hundred yards 
of our camp, and would be unknown but for giving tongue, like 
foxhounds: this is their nearest approach to speech. A man 
hoeing was stalked by a soko and seized; he roared out, but the 
soko giggled and grinned, and left him as if he had done it/play. 
A child caught up by a soko is often abused by being pinched and 
scratched and let fall. The soko kills the leopard occasionally, by 
seizing both paws and biting them so as to disable them; he then 
goes up a tree, groans over his wounds and somelimes recovers, 
while the leopard dies: at other times both soko and leopard die. 
The lion kills him at once and tears his limbs off, but does not 
devour him. The soko eats no flesh; small bananas are his 
dainties, but no maize: his food consists of wild fruits, which 
abound: one [of these] staféné or Manyuema mamwa is like a 
large sweet sop, but indifferent in taste and flesh. The soko at 
times brings forth twins. A very large soko was seen by Mo- 
hamad’s hunters picking his nails: they tried to stalk him, but he 
vanished. Some Manyuema think that their buried dead rise as 
sokos, and one was killed with holes in his ears as if he had been 
a man [? as if he had worn ear-rings]._ He is very strong, and 
fears guns, but not spears: he never catches women. Sokos 
collect together and make a drumming noise, some say with hollow 
trees, then burst forth into loud yells, which are well imitated by 
the natives’ embryotic music. If a man has no spear the soko 
goes away satisfied, but if wounded he seizes the wrist, lops off the 
fingers, and spits them out, slaps the cheek of his victim, and bites 
without breaking the skin: he draws out a spear, but never uses it, 
and takes some leaves and stuffs them into his wound to staunch 
the blood: he does not wish an encounter with an armed man. 
He sees women do him no harm, and never molests them; a man 
without a spear is nearly as safe from him. They beat hollow 
trees as drums with their hands, and then scream as music to it; 
