lU 



VERTEBRATES. 



ovev, but takes a tremendous leap, ten or twelve feet higt, and 

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

 extraordinary manner. It is from tbis habit of leaping that the 

 Dutch Boers vrho inhabit the Cape have given it the name of 

 Springbok. 



Dr. Gumming thus describes a herd of these animals: "On 

 the 28th I had the satisfaction of beholding, for the first time, 

 what I had often heard the Boers allude to, viz. a ' trek-bokken,' 

 or grand migration of springboks. This was, I think, the most 

 extraordinary and striking scene, as connected with beasts of the 

 chase, that I have ever beheld. For about two hours before the 

 day dawned I had been lying awake in my wagon, listening to the 

 grunting of the bucks within two hundred 

 yards of me, imagining that some large 

 herd of springboks was feeding beside my 

 camp ; but on my rising when it was clear, 

 and looking about me, I beheld the ground 

 to the northward of my camp actually 

 covered with a dense living mass of 

 springboks, marching slowly and steadily 

 along, extending from an opening in a 

 long range of hills on the west, through 

 which they continued pouring, like the 

 flood of some great river, to a ridge about 

 a mile to the north-east, over which they disappeared. The breadth 

 of the ground they covered might have been somewhere about 

 half a mile. I stood upon the fore-chest of my wagon for nearly 

 two hours, lost in wonder at the novel and wonderful scene which 

 was passing before me, and had some difficulty in convincing my- 

 self that it was reality which I beheld, and not the wild and exag- 

 gerated picture of a hunter's dream. During this time their vast 

 legions cflntinued streaming through the neck in the hills in one 

 unbroken compact phalanx. 



" Vast and surprising as was the herd of springboks which 

 T had that morning witnessed, it was infinitely surpassed by what 

 I beheld on the march from my vley to old Sweir's camp ; for on 



Springbok 



