THE ANTELOPES. 



as the adult animals, while it manifests at the 

 same time a great deal of sportiveness. 



The chamois can easily be kept in captivity, 

 but it does not live 

 long, and its keepers 

 have only seldom been 

 successful in obtaining 

 offspring. Hybrids 

 between the chamois 

 and the goat have 

 often been met with, 

 but it has never been 

 found possible to cause 

 these hybrids to pro- 

 pagate. I hope I may- 

 be permitted to say 

 without offence to the 

 lovers of chamois flesh 

 that I have never my- 

 self found it palatable 

 except in the case of 

 young animals. As 



9i 



tough, and this is especially true of old bucks, 

 of the killing of which many a hunter is so 

 proud. The flesh of such an animal has not 

 ^s*^te . - only a shockingly bad 

 taste, but also a dis- 

 agreeable smell. 



Fig. 166. — The Sassa Antelope [Oreotragus saltator) 



soon as the chamois 



becomes pretty well grown its flesh becomes 



["The tenacity of life 

 exhibited by the chamois 

 is very remarkable. 

 Tschudi, author of Das 

 Thierleben der Alpenwelt, 

 mentions an instance in 

 which a chamois buck 

 was shot dead, which had 

 previously had one of its 

 horns shot away and one 

 of its legs broken, and 

 which bore the scars of a 

 bullet that had passed 

 through its body. In 

 another case two chamois 

 were shot over a precipice, 

 and the hunter, in taking up one of them, detected 

 signs of life still remaining in it, and gave it two or 



page 93- 



^m^M 



Fig. 167.— The Bleekbok or Urebi (Calotragus scoparius). page 93 



three smart blows on the head. This, however, had 

 only the effect of making the animal recover more 

 completely, for though held by one leg it at once 

 bounded off dragging the hunter along with it, till 

 at last it managed to disengage itself by a great 



leap, after which it was quickly lost to view. 

 Often the hunter follows an animal that he has 

 struck on what would seem to others quite im- 

 practicable steeps, and the most astonishing adven- 

 tures are recorded of huntsmen, who, in the heat 



