534 
African Game Trails 
puzzled me, as I thought they must be 
made by some beast. The bulbuls sang 
well. Most of the birds were in no way like 
our home birds. 
Loring trapped quantities of mice and 
rats, and it was curious to see how many 
of them had acquired characters which 
Heller trapped various beasts; beauti¬ 
fully marked genets and a big white-tailed 
mongoose which was very savage. But his 
most remarkable catch was a leopard. He 
had set a steel trap, fastened to a loose thorn 
branch, for mongoose, civets, or jackals; 
it was a number two Blake, such as in Amer- 
caused them superficially to resemble Amer¬ 
ican animals with which they had no real 
kinship. The sand rats that burrowed in 
the dry plains were in shape, in color, eyes, 
tail, and paws strikingly like our pocket 
gophers, which have similar habits. So the 
long-tailed gerbilles, or gerbille-like rats, 
resembled our kangaroo rats; and there 
was a blunt-nosed, stubby-tailed little rat 
superficially hardly to be told from our rice 
rat. But the most characteristic rodent, the 
big long-tailed, jumping springhaas, re¬ 
sembled nothing of ours; and there were 
tree rats and spiny mice. There were gray 
monkeys in the trees around camp, which 
the naturalists shot. 
ica we use for coons, skunks, foxes, and 
perhaps bobcats and coyotes. In the morn¬ 
ing he found it gone, and followed the trail 
of the thorn branch until it led into a dense 
thicket, from which issued an ominous 
growl. His native boy shouted “simba”; 
but it was a leopard, not a lion. He could 
not see into the thicket; so he sent back to 
camp for his rifle, and when it came he 
climbed a tree and endeavored to catch a 
glimpse of the animal. He could see noth¬ 
ing, however; and finally fired into the 
thicket rather at random. The answer was 
a furious growl, and the leopard charged 
out to the foot of the tree, much hampered 
by the big thorn branch. He put a bullet 
