APPENDICES 
425 
[? police] to protect you while you take your ease; with us 
each unit is a trained and tireless sentinel. I have spoken.”— 
With a wild fling of his heels, the whirl of a bushy tail, and 
amidst a cloud of dust, my shaggy visitor vanished o’er 
the veld. 
Pondering on this message from another world, the con¬ 
clusion suggested itself that other factors had escaped the 
insight of my brindled friend. First comes, foreknowledge of 
death; secondly, another pertinent factor which we humans 
are wont to diagnose as “nerves”—or, more accurately, the 
total lack of either in the wild-world. No wild beast is appalled 
by the knowledge that one day (or one night) he must pay 
the final debt of Nature. What does fill his life with terror is 
the fear of loss—or restriction—of physical freedom or liberty. 
It is the darkest hour. . . . Suddenly the silence is shocked 
by a rush and an appalling roar. One of his company has 
paid that penalty—caught and killed by a lion. The survivors 
scatter. But not far. Within ioo yards all halt, all rejoin, await¬ 
ing their missing messmate. He never rejoins; but a subtle, 
subconscious instinct presently leads the survivors to place a 
rather wider interval between themselves and such alarms— 
but not (as they see the matter) of death. Then, forgetful of 
peril, all resume their briefly interrupted feed. Whether these 
alarmed animals know, or know not, that that particular lion 
has temporarily ceased to be a beast-of-prey, has ceased to 
menace their safety, is beyond my introspection to define. In 
effect, they recognise the fact. 
Next consider “ nerves.” The lives of all these herbivores 
are spent in the midst of alarms, exposed day and night to 
instant danger. The incessant vigilance required to guard 
against such perils becomes a sort of second nature; hence no 
wild-beast is afflicted with “nerves”—a distinct advantage over 
man. Picture as a parallel some prosperous city-merchant 
obliged, on his daily route to the counting-house, to traverse 
suburbs infested by hungry hyenas, leopards, wolves . . . with 
a sprinkling of lions lurking about the wooded squares. A 
month of such mental anxiety would wear down the most 
portly Alderman to a wreck! But not even so would that 
Alderman be so silly as—in a new drab suit (or other sartorial 
camouflage)—to entrust his safety to “colour-protection.” 
