124 DISEASES OF WII<D ANIMAI£. 



resort to heaps of ashes and places containing efflorescence 

 of the nitrates for the salts these contain. 



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 un- 

 eatable even by the natives. Reference has already been 

 made to the peripneumonia which cuts off horses, tolos or 

 koodoos. Great numbers also of zebras are found dead 

 with masses of foam at the nostrils, exactly as occurs in the 

 common " horse-sickness." The production of the malig- 

 nant carbuncle called kuatsi, or selonda, by the flesh when 

 eaten, is another proof of the disease of the tame and wild 

 being identical. I once found a buffalo blind from 

 ophthalmia standing 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 these are not the cause of 

 the dimness of vision which will make him charge past a 

 man who has wounded him, if he stands perfectly still, in 

 the belief that his enemy is a tree. It probably arises from 

 the horn being in the line of vision, for the variety named 

 kuabaoba, which has a straight horn directed downwards 

 away from that line, possesses acute eyesight, and is much 

 more wary. 



All the wild animals are subject to intestinal worms 

 besides. I have observed bunches of a tape-like thread 

 and short worms of enlarged sizes in the rhinoceros. The 

 zebras and elephants are seldom without them, and a 

 thread-worm may often be seen under the peritoneum of 

 these animals. Short red larvae, which convey a stinging 

 sensation to the hand, are seen clustering round the orifice 

 of the windpipe (trachea) of this animal at the back of the 

 throat ; others are seen in the frontal sinus of antelopes ; 

 and curious flat leech-like worms with black eyes are found 

 in the stomachs of leches. The zebra, giraffe, eland, and 

 kukama have been seen mere skeletons from decay of their 

 teeth as well as from disease. 



The carnivora, too, become diseased and mangy ; lions 

 get lean and perish miserably by reason of the decay of the 

 teeth. When a lion grows too old to catch game, he 

 frequently takes to killing goats in the villages ; a woman 

 or child happening to go out at night falls a prey too • 



