THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
or forest covered regions. Not only in different sections of its range, but in 
one limited area of country, the same elands will be found frequenting 
entirely different kinds of ground according to the time of year. For 
instance, in Southern Rhodesia — I am speaking of the country as I knew 
it many years ago — elands were never found from January to June on 
the open grassy downs near the watershed. At that time of year, they 
frequented the thickly forested and often very broken hilly country to the 
north, east and south of the high open plateau. After the rainy season, 
which usually ended in April, the natives annually set fire to the grass on 
the open downs, as soon as it was dry enough to burn, in order to find the 
holes of a kind of large field mouse, to the flesh of which they were very 
partial. This burning of the grass usually commenced some time in June, 
and was soon followed by the appearance of elands in small herds, all 
moving out of the forest country on to the open grass land. 
I imagine that long experience had taught the elands in this part of the 
country to connect the smell of the smoke of grass fires with young green 
grass, which in parts of Southern Rhodesia commences to sprout as soon 
as the long dry grass is burnt off. As the dry season advanced more and 
more elands came up on to the plateau and gradually collected into large 
herds of from sixty to over a hundred individuals, which kept together 
until the rainy season, which usually set in about November, was well 
advanced. About the new year, however, they once more left the open 
country, and, breaking up again into small herds, spent the rest of the 
rainy season and the early part of the following dry season in the forested 
or broken hilly country to the north and east of the high open downs. In 
the northern part of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, too, although there 
the whole country, with but few exceptions, is covered with forest and 
bush, elands were accustomed to collect at certain times of year in large 
herds, and move into districts in which at other seasons they were either 
scarce or altogether absent. The largest herd of elands I ever saw was in 
the forest country to the south of the Mababi plain. How many there were 
I cannot pretend to say with any exactitude, but certainly there were quite 
two hundred and very possibly three hundred elands together in this great 
herd. Behind the dense phalanx of females and young males came twelve 
huge old bulls, every one of which showed the great black tuft of hair on 
the forehead, and the immense development of the neck, which are never 
seen except in really old bull elands. Later on in the season, no doubt, this 
great herd would have broken up into many small troops, and the old bulls 
106 
