When Older It Is Used As Food,
And The Shell Converted Into A Rude Basin To Hold Food Or Water.
It Owes Its Continuance Neither To Speed Nor Cunning.
Its color,
yellow and dark brown, is well adapted, by its similarity
to the surrounding grass and brushwood, to
Render it indistinguishable;
and, though it makes an awkward attempt to run on the approach of man,
its trust is in its bony covering, from which even the teeth of a hyaena
glance off foiled. When this long-lived creature is about
to deposit her eggs, she lets herself into the ground by throwing the earth up
round her shell, until only the top is visible; then covering up the eggs,
she leaves them until the rains begin to fall and the fresh herbage appears;
the young ones then come out, their shells still quite soft,
and, unattended by their dam, begin the world for themselves.
Their food is tender grass and a plant named thotona, and they frequently
resort to heaps of ashes and places containing efflorescence of the nitrates
for the salts these contain.
Inquiries among the Bushmen and Bakalahari, who are intimately acquainted
with the habits of the game, lead to the belief that many diseases prevail
among wild animals. I have seen the kokong or gnu, kama or hartebeest,
the tsessebe, kukama, and the giraffe, so mangy as to be uneatable
even by the natives. Reference has already been made to the peripneumonia
which cuts off horses, tolos or koodoos.
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