re they ate some
pieces of cork which had been dropped on the floor, and died. I was
equally unfortunate with a beautiful, spotted antelope, which was
brought to me; and which never could stand in the house. It had not been
hurt; but the instant it was put upon its legs, it slipped about, and I
was told this species always did so. I fed it, carried it about, and it
was very gentle, and began to know me, though still wild. It died at the
end of a fortnight, in strong convulsions.

Antelopes are exclusively inhabitants of the Old World; and some idea
may be formed of their immense numbers in South Africa, where the
species are most varied and powerful, by reading the following
quotations from Mr. Pringle, and Mr. Gordon Cumming. The former
says--"We pursued our journey over extensive plains, still parched by
severe drought, and undulating heights clothed with a brown and scanty
herbage, and sprinkled over with numerous herds of springbok. Near the
banks of the Little Fish river, so numerous were those herds, that they
literally speckled the face of the country, as far as the eye could
reach; insomuch that we calculated we had sometimes within view not less
than 20,000 of these beautiful animals. As we galloped on, they bounded
off continually, on either side, with the velocity from which they
derive their colonial appellation. They were probably _part_ of one of
the great migratory swarms which, after long-continued droughts,
sometimes inundate the colony from the Northern wastes."

Mr. Cumming informs us, that, "When pursued, the springbok jumps up into
the air ten or twelve feet, for which they curve their loins, rise
perpendicularly, and the long white hair on their haunches and back
floats about; they pass over a space of twelve to fifteen feet, come
down, then rise again; and after doing this several times, they bound
off, arch their necks, then halt, and face their enemy. If they come to
a place over which men or lions have walked, they jump across it. They
can only be compared to locusts; for they eat up every green thing, and
always return to their haunts by a different road to that which they had
previously passed. Their herds consist of tens of thousands; and where
they have staid for some time, thousands of skulls strew the plain." In
another part of his book, the same author tells us, that the ground was
literally covered with them, forming a dense, living mass, marching
slowly, and pouring like a great river