197 
CH. IX] EMOTIONS OF GAME 
tails, as if jerked by electricity. In the Sotik the topis 
all seemed to have calves of about the same age, as if 
bom from four to six months earlier. The young of 
the other game were of every age. The males of all 
the antelopes fought much among themselves. The 
gazelle bucks of both species would face one another, 
their heads between the fore-legs and the horns level 
with the ground, and each would punch his opponent 
until the hair flew. 
Watching the game, one was struck by the intensity 
and the evanescence of their emotions. Civilized man 
now usually passes his life under conditions which 
eliminate the intensity of terror felt by his ancestors 
when death by violence was their normal end, and 
threatened them during every hour of the day and 
night. It is only in nightmares that the average 
dweller in civilized countries now undergoes the hideous 
horror which was the regular and frequent portion of his 
ages-vanished forefathers, and which is still an everyday 
incident in the lives of most wild creatures. But the 
dread is short-lived, and its horror vanishes with instan¬ 
taneous rapidity. In these wilds the game dreaded the 
lion and the other flesh-eating beasts rather than man. 
We saw innumerable kills of all the buck, and of zebra 
the neck being usually dislocated, and it was evident 
that none of the lion’s victims, not even the truculent 
wildebeest or huge eland, had been able to make any 
fight against him. The game is ever on the alert 
against this greatest of foes, and every herd, almost 
every individual, is in imminent and deadly peril every 
few days or nights, and of course suffers in addition 
from countless false alarms. But no sooner is the 
danger over than the animals resume their feeding, or 
love-making, or their fighting among themselves. Two 
