Chap VII. DISEASES OF WILD ANIMALS. 91 



from which the teeth of the hyaena glance off foiled, does no: 

 protect it from man. Its yellow and brown colour, by its 

 similarity to the surrounding grass and brushwood, helps to 

 render it indistinguishable. The young are taken for the 

 sake of their shells. These are made into boxes, which the 

 women fill with sweet-smelling roots and hang them round 

 their persons. When older the animal is eaten, and its armour 

 converted into a rude basin to hold food or water. "When 

 about to deposit its eggs, it lets itself into the ground by 

 throwing the earth up round the shell, until the top only is 

 visible; the eggs laid, it covers them up and leaves them. 

 When the rains begin to fall and the fresh herbage appears, 

 the young ones come out, and, unattended by their dam, 

 begin the world for themselves. Their food is tender grass 

 and a plant named thotona. They frequently devour wood- 

 ashes, and travel great distances to places where they can 

 get health-giving salt. 



Inquiries among the Bushmen and Bakalahari, who are 

 intimately acquainted with the habits of the game, lead to the 

 belief that many diseases prevail among wild animals. I have 

 seen the kokong or gnu, kama or hartebeest, the tsessebe, 

 kukama, and the giraffe, so mangy as to be uneatable even by 

 the natives. Numerous zebras are found dead with masses of 

 foam at the nostrils, exactly as occurs in the common " horse- 

 sickness." I once found a buffalo sightless from ophthalmia 

 by the fountain Otse ; when he attempted to run he lifted up 

 his feet in the manner peculiar to blind animals. The 

 rhinoceros has often worms on the conjunction of his eyes ; 

 but the inability to see correctly which makes him charge 

 past a man who has wounded him, if he stands perfectly still, 

 in the belief that his enemy is a tree, probably arises from the 

 horn being placed in the line of vision. All the wild animals 

 are subject to intestinal worms. The zebras and elephants 

 are seldom without them. The zebra, giraffe, eland, and 

 kukama, sometimes become mere skeletons from dec 

 their teeth. Lions get lean and perish miserably from the 

 same cause. When they grow too old to catch game, they 

 frequently take to killing goats in the villages : a woman or 

 child who happens to go out at night falls into their clutches. 

 As they have no other resource, they continue- to visit in- 



