The Bakalahari Take Advantage Of This Feeling,
And Burn Off Large Patches Of Grass, Not Only To Attract The Game
By The New Crop When It Comes Up, But Also To Form Bare Spots
For The Springbuck To Range Over.
It is not the springbuck alone that manifests this feeling.
When oxen are
taken into a country of high grass, they are much more ready to be startled;
their sense of danger is increased by the increased power of concealment
afforded to an enemy by such cover, and they will often start off in terror
at the ill-defined outlines of each other. The springbuck,
possessing this feeling in an intense degree, and being eminently gregarious,
becomes uneasy as the grass of the Kalahari becomes tall.
The vegetation being more sparse in the more arid south,
naturally induces the different herds to turn in that direction.
As they advance and increase in numbers, the pasturage becomes more scarce;
it is still more so the further they go, until they are at last obliged,
in order to obtain the means of subsistence, to cross the Orange River,
and become the pest of the sheep-farmer in a country which contains
scarcely any of their favorite grassy food. If they light on a field of wheat
in their way, an army of locusts could not make a cleaner sweep of the whole
than they will do. It is questionable whether they ever return,
as they have never been seen as a returning body.
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