THE GAZELLES AND THEIR ALLIES 605 
game. They do almost no damage to the settler, and they 
are so easily protected that there can be no excuse for their 
extermination or serious diminution. Any man or any 
woman interested in natural history could easily make an 
invaluable life study of these pretty and interesting little 
gazelles, because their tameness, their accessibility, and 
the nature of their haunts render it possible to study all 
their actions continuously and minutely from day to day 
throughout the seasons. Such a study, if serious and pro¬ 
longed, and by a competent and interested observer, would 
throw much light on many problems of animal psychology. 
Most, although not all, of the plains game lead substan¬ 
tially the same lives, and as a rule they are very simple 
lives; but there are queer breaks in and exceptions to these 
lives, and on some points the species differed widely from 
one another, while in others the differences are individual 
rather than specific; and we need to know both the general 
rules of their conduct and, so far as possible, the explanations 
for the seeming exceptions. 
The black-snouted Thomson gazelle is well character¬ 
ized by its name. Besides this distinguishing character, 
it may be recognized by its darker colored or blackish 
facial stripes and by the more pronounced black pygal 
stripe. The horns are usually distinguishable by their 
wider spread and by their slightly greater length. The 
differences in these dimensions average two inches more in 
spread at the tips and one inch more in length compared to 
the typical race. 
The coloration on the dorsal surface is a uniform cinna¬ 
mon from the base of the tail to the nape. The lower sides 
are marked by a broad black flank band extending from 
the shoulder to the hind quarters, bordered below by the 
white under-parts and above by a wide stripe of vina- 
ceous-buff distinctly lighter than the cinnamon dorsal 
