PORCUPINES 
215 
CH.IX] 
somewhat when he pulled. A bear thus caught would 
have chewed up the trap or else pulled his foot loose, 
even at the cost of sacrificing the toe ; but the cats are 
more sensitive to pain. This leopard was smaller than 
any full-grown male cougar I have ever killed, and yet 
cougars often kill game rather heavier than leopards 
usually venture upon ; yet very few cougars indeed 
would show anything like the pluck and ferocity shown 
by this leopard, and characteristic of its kind. 
Kermit killed a waterbuck of a kind new to us—the 
sing-sing. He also killed two porcupines and two 
baboons. The porcupines are terrestrial animals, living 
in burrows, to which they keep during the daytime. 
They are much heavier than, and in all their ways 
totally different from, our sluggish tree porcupines. 
The baboons were numerous around this camp, living 
both among the rocks and in the tree-tops. They are 
hideous creatures. They ravage the crops and tear 
open new-born lambs to get at the milk inside them ; 
and where the natives are timid and unable to harm 
them, they become wantonly savage and aggressive, 
and attack and even kill women and children. In 
Uganda, Cuninghame had once been asked by a native 
chief to come to his village and shoot the baboons, as 
they had just killed two women, badly bitten several 
children, and caused such a reign of terror that the 
village would be abandoned if they were not killed 
or intimidated. He himself saw the torn and mutilated 
bodies of the dead women ; and he stayed in the village 
a week, shooting so many baboons that the remainder 
were thoroughly cowed. Baboons and boars are the 
most formidable of all foes to the dogs that hunt them 
—just as leopards are of all wild animals those most apt 
to prey on dogs. A baboon’s teeth and hands are far 
