EAST AFRICAN MAMMALS. 729 



tliorongh searcli, but owing to the amount of cover tlie animal 

 got away. 



Dogs would seem to be the next favourite article of diet, one 

 Avas taken off the verandah of a house near mine. At 5 a.m. one 

 morning 1 was awakened by a very horrid noise, ratlier like cats 

 (juarreUing, but dying away in a moan followed by sevei'al other 

 moans. It was only sixty feet from the house, .and I ran out 

 with a lantern, buc could see nothing. 



My neighbour's dog, a biggisli animal, was in the habit of 

 coming to this ^pot on my path to relieve itself every u)orning, 

 .and the leopard had no doubt become aware of this. My boy 

 took up the spoor and traced it for two hundred yards into the 

 rubber pla.ntation, where he found the dog with only one haunch 

 eaten. Mr. C. F. M. Swynnerton sat up by this and .'•aw the 

 leopard as it returned at dusk, but the leopard seeing him also 

 made off before he had time to fire. 



Goats make a very efiective bait for leopard tra.|)S, but on one 

 occasion, the setting of the string being too slack, a, leopaid was 

 shot dead just as its jaws closed into the goat's skull so that they 

 both died simultaneously, the leopard not even opening its jaws 

 which had penetrated to the brain. Remains of goats were found 

 in the stomachs of several leopards. 



Bushbuck are often killed by them ; in the case of one old male 

 killed in a donga (21.xii. 20), it could be plainly seen that the 

 leopard had sprung on its back and clawed its throat. It only 

 ate from the haunches, but the next night returned, dragged the 

 body twelve feet .away, and made another meal from it. On 

 another occasion a gin was set on a path much frequented by 

 leopards; a female bushbuck was caught in the gin, and tiie 

 leopar-d killed and ate p.art of her. A native going to examine 

 the gin in the morning brought the remains of the bushbuck 

 back to eat himself, but was made to return it. The leopai'd 

 returned, .adroitly avoided both gins which had been reset, and 

 dragged the carcass half-a-mile away up a donga. The boy took 

 \ip the spoor in pouring rain and came on the leopard, which gave 

 a. snarl and made off. 



On the Wembere plains I came on two instances where leopardr^ 

 or a leopard had killed impalla ; in on^ case a male, and m the 

 other a female. At Kipera, between 5-11. ix. 22, leopards killed 

 a male rcedbuck, a calf eland, and a Lichtenstein's hartebeest in 

 calf, a feAv days later another reedbuck. In the case of the 

 hartebeest it might have been the work of lions. 



At times they will tackle porcupines. An almost full-groWn 

 leopard entered a hut at Tindiga., where it was shot by a native, 

 who brought it to me in the flesh. It was in a most frightful 

 condition, covered with sores, from one of which I recovered a. 

 broken portion of a porcupine quill. On its neck was a bare 

 patch a foot in length and two inches broad in its widest part ; 

 the patch was hard dried skin and may have been made by the 

 leopard clawing at some quill-stumps left in the skin. 



