48 THE ANTELOPE OF AMERICA. 
round the inclosure, is relieved by one of his companions. In 
this way the hunters take their turns, relieving each other, and 
keeping up a continued pursuit by relays without fatigue to them- 
selves. The poor antelopes, in the end, are so worried down 
that the whole party of men enter and despatch them with clubs, 
not one escaping which has entered the inclosure. The most 
curious circumstance in this chase is, that an animal so fleet and 
agile as the antelope, and straining for its life, should range 
round and round this fated inclosure without attempting to over- 
leap the low barrier which surrounds it. Such, however, is said 
to be the fact, and such their only mode of hunting the ante- 
lope.” 
When I received a three-year old buck, lately captured on the 
plains, and sent me, I feared he would scale the eight feet paling 
fence which incloses the parks, for I had seen the female which I 
had had before make most astonishing horizontal leaps across 
ravines in the park, without an apparent effort, which she might 
just as well have walked across. 
Although I had observed this buck, whilst confined in the yard, 
when frightened by a person going in, dash against the palings 
not three feet from the ground, in his efforts to break through 
the fence, without attempting to leap over it, yet it never oc- 
curred to me that he could not make high vertical leaps, till I 
met the statement above quoted. Subsequent observation of the 
conduct of these animals in my grounds convinced me that this 
statement might well be true, and that the Prong Buck may be 
restrained by a fence which would be sufficient to confine our 
domestic sheep. 
In speaking of Mr. Cipperly’s antelopes, Mr. Crooker says, 
‘*« A four foot fence was ample to confine them.” 
This inability to leap over high objects may no doubt be at- 
tributable to the fact that they live upon the plains, where they 
rarely meet with such obstructions, and so they and their ances- 
tors for untold generations have had no occasion to overleap high 
obstructions, and thus from disuse they do not know how to do 
so, and never attempt it when they do meet them. 
If the antelope on the plains desires to cross the railroad 
track, when alarmed by the cars, as is sometimes the case, he 
will strain every muscle to outrun the train and cross ahead of 
it, as if he suspected a purpose to cut him off from crossing; and 
thus many an exciting race has been witnessed between muscle 
and steam. The same disposition is manifested by the bison, or 
