680 
AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 
motionless, especially if he is under or beside even the small¬ 
est and most scantily leaved bush. Their sense of smell is 
keen, as with all game. 
They are grass-eaters, and are emphatically animals of 
the open plains, seeming to be indifferent as to whether 
these are entirely bare of trees or are thinly dotted with 
occasional thorny acacias. We never saw them in anything 
resembling thick cover, not even in such cover as that to 
which their companions, the hartebeests, sometimes pene¬ 
trated; but in places they seemed to like the plains over 
which acacias were scattered, and would stand or rest at mid¬ 
day in their shade. As with other game, it was astonish¬ 
ing to see how they abounded, and how fat they became, in 
dry, open country, where water was scarce and the pastur¬ 
age brown and withered. As long as they could reach water 
once in twenty-four hours, and find abundant pasturage of 
the kind they liked—no matter how dry—within eight or 
ten miles of the water, they throve. In such a district they 
lived throughout the year, seeming to migrate much less 
freely than the wildebeest and some other game—-in fact, 
the only migrations we heard of were those occurring when 
they had to leave a given district because the water and 
herbage failed outright. On the Athi and Kapiti Plains we 
were informed by the settlers that the zebras stayed all 
the time, with very slight shifts of a few miles one way or the 
other, as the different series of pools dried or filled. In the 
Sotik we were informed that in times of drought the zebra 
and almost all the other game were obliged to abandon 
extensive regions in which they swarmed after the rains. 
Like so many big animals, zebras are not favored by a 
rank and luxurious plant growth. We never saw them in 
