THE BLACK-BACKED JACKAL 
the jackal, and the various methods eset and 
employed to get rid of it. 
The jackal i is at the present time the worst form 
of vermin with which man has to contend in his 
struggle to colonise South Africa. Regarded from 
- an economic point of view, the jackal has few 
virtues. The only real service he renders us is the 
destruction of rats, mice, and some kinds of noxious 
insects, including that dreaded pest the migratory 
locust. 
We cannot blame him for refusing to die of star- 
vation so long as there are tender lambs, kids, 
poultry, and young ostriches to be had, for we have 
robbed him of his birthright in the shape of the 
various game animals and birds. However, as 
man spreads over the land the jackal must vanish, 
for the two cannot live in proximity in peace. It 
is but the operation of the law of the survival of 
the fittest. 
The Cape Jackal has developed a new vice. 
It has discovered that by banging ostrich eggs 
.against each other, or on stones, it can break them 
‘and so gain access to the nourishing contents. 
So secretive and cunning is the jackal, that it is 
often able to quietly steal the eggs from beneath 
the sitting birds during the hours of darkness, and 
rolling them quietly away by gentle pushes with 
its nose, and finding a convenient stone, they are 
broken by being tilted against it. 
In several parts of the country where the nature 
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