Mrs. Loudon's Entertaining Naturalist: Being popular descriptions, tales, and anecdotes of more than Five Hundred Animals.Loudon, Mrs. (Jane)
General
Mrs. Loudon's Entertaining Naturalist: Being popular descriptions, tales, and anecdotes of more than Five Hundred Animals.
Loudon, Mrs. (Jane)
Animals -- Juvenile literature; Zoology -- Juvenile literature
The mode of killing these animals, as was practised a few years ago, was
the only remnant of the ancient mode of hunting that existed in this
country. On notice being given that a Wild Bull would be killed on a
certain day, the inhabitants of the neighbourhood assembled, sometimes
to the number of a hundred horsemen, and four or five hundred foot, all
armed with guns or other weapons. Those on foot stood upon the walls, or
climbed into trees, while the horsemen separated a Bull from the rest of
the herd, and chased him until he stood at bay, when they dismounted and
fired. At some of these huntings, twenty or thirty shots have been
discharged before the animal was subdued. On such occasions the bleeding
victim grew desperately furious from the smarting of his wounds, and the
shouts of savage joy echoing from every side.
When the Cows calve, they hide their young ones for a week or ten days
in some sequestered retreat, and go to suckle them two or three times in
a day. If any person comes near one of the calves it crouches close upon
the ground, and endeavours to hide itself, a proof of the native
wildness of the animals. In one instance where a calf was disturbed, it
pawed the ground like an old Bull, and attempted to butt with its head,
till it fell from weakness. It had done enough, however, to raise an
alarm, and the whole herd came to its rescue, compelling the intruder to
decamp: for the dams will allow no one to touch their young without
attacking him with impetuosity. In the Duke of Hamilton’s park, in the
summer of 1841, a calf, which was disturbed by the passing of a carriage
near it, bellowed so fearfully as to rouse the whole herd, though they
were at a considerable distance.
[Illustration: THE AFRICAN BUFFALO (_Bubalus Caffer._)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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