614 
Colonel S. R. Clarke on 
[Ibis, 
men in Rhodesia they have been able to cross the native- 
curs with greyhounds, and their dogs nowadays are fast, and 
with their assistance they kill, besides many of the smaller 
buck, such as Oribi, the young of the largest antelopes, and 
probably do a great deal towards reducing the numbers of 
the big buck. There are still, however, plenty left for sport 
of most of the species of the latter that were originally found 
in the country—the Roan, which appears to like sour veld, 
and the Eland, which subsist largely by browsing, are the 
most generally distributed ; while the Kudu, which desire 
thick covert to hide in, and the Sable, which seem to prefer 
light soil with short sweet grass and open park-like country 
shaded by large trees, are much more locally distributed. 
Our camps until we crossed the Kafue were generally 
pitched by a pan of water near to spots where there was a 
chance of finding one or both of these two antelopes. 
These pans were sometimes deep enough to hold water 
permanently through the dry season, but generally they 
represented the last of the summer floods now drying up, 
often grass grew all over them, and until one waded in and 
parted the grass stems by one’s hands, the water did not 
show : still, if care was taken to fill drinking-water vessels 
well away from the bank, the water was generally perfectly 
sweet and good, but twice in the Kafue Flats we got to 
bad water ; the first time we attributed the cause to a peaty 
soil, and on the second occasion to the hundreds, perhaps 
thousands, of Spurwing Geese that came to this pan every 
evening. At the deeper pans there were the usual number 
of thirsty land-birds congregated to drink, especially Doves, 
•and at the largest of them were several Darters and a pair of 
very tame Fishing Eagles (Haliaetus vocifer), but the shallow 
pans were tenanted by wading- and water-birds in addition : 
generally there was a pair of Saddle-billed Storks (Ephip- 
piorhynchus senegalensis ), a flock of Open-bills, Crowned 
Cranes, and other wading birds; among them I was inter¬ 
ested to see the Common Sandpiper, and obtained a specimen 
on the 15th of August. A fortnight later, on the banks of the 
Kafue River, I saw Greenshanks. I am quite sure that the 
