48 Animal Life in South Africa. 



The migratory habits of these animals also prevent the 

 herbage, and consequently the water supply, of any particular 

 district being affected by over-cropping. In the Cape Colony, 

 near Graaf-Reinet (and, we have been told, in some of the 

 Merino districts in Spain), the reverse of this picture may be 

 seen. In these cases, by over-feeding certain of the sheep- 

 walks, the herbage has first become impoverished, and in the 

 end, like the water supply, has nearly disappeared. 



The numbers of these animals are also kept in check by 

 the large proportion of the carnivora. Lions, indeed, are 

 getting scarce ; but the various species of leopard and tiger- 

 cat, known to the colonists under the general name of tigers, 

 and of hyaenas (called wolves), is still very great. The bene- 

 ficent purpose these animals fulfil in the great scheme of 

 nature, has been so admirably pointed out in the ' ' Bridgewater 

 Treatise " of the late Dean Buckland, that although our limits 

 forbid our transcribing it, we cannot help begging the reader 

 to turn to it. 



It is, indeed, trite and superfluous to say that this intimate 

 relation between every department of nature may be traced by 

 the attentive observer upon every spot on the earth's surface, 

 but in South Africa it possesses an additional interest from the 

 consideration that while on the one hand (if the surmises of 

 recent geologists as to the antiquity of the present state of 

 the South African continent be correct),* there is no region we 

 can point to where those relations as they now exist, have 

 been longer in force ; there is on the other none where the 

 retreat of animal life before the almost imperceptible encroach- 

 ments of civilized man has been and is progressing in a more 

 marked or obvious manner. 



* See Sir E. Murchison's remarks on the South African continent. 



