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. Great numbers
also of zebras are found dead with masses of foam at the nostrils,
exactly as occurs in the common "horse-sickness". The production of the
malignant carbuncle called kuatsi, or selonda, by the flesh when eaten,
is another proof of the disease of the tame and wild being identical.
I once found a buffalo blind from ophthalmia standing by the fountain
Otse; when he attempted to run he lifted up his feet in the manner
peculiar to blind animals. The rhinoceros has often worms on the
conjunction of his eyes; but these are not the cause of the dimness of
vision which will make him charge past a man who has wounded him, if
he stands perfectly still, in the belief that his enemy is a tree.
It probably arises from the horn being in the line of vision, for the
variety named kuabaoba, which has a straight horn directed downward away
from that line, possesses acute eyesight, and is much more wary.

All the wild animals are subject to intestinal worms besides. I have
observed bunches of a tape-like thread and short worms of enlarged sizes
in the rhinoceros. The zebra and elephants are seldom without them, and
a thread-worm may often be seen under the peritoneum of these animals.
Short red larvae, which convey a stinging sensation to the hand, are
seen clustering round the orifice of the windpipe (trachea) of this
animal at the back of the throat; others are seen in the frontal sinus
of antelopes; and curious flat, leech-like worms, with black eyes, are
found in the stomachs of leches. The zebra, giraffe, eland, and kukama
have been seen mere skeletons from decay of their teeth as well as from
disease.

The carnivora, too, become diseased