“But although frequently found herding by itself, the Springbok is usually detected in the society of Gnoos, Quaggas, Ostriches, or Blesboks. Fleet as the wind, and thoroughly conscious of its own speed, it mingles with their motley herds, sauntering about with an easy careless gait, occasionally with outstretched neck approaching some coquettish doe, and spreading its own glittering white folds so as to effect a sudden and complete metamorphosis of exterior from fawn-colour to white. Wariest of the wary, however, the Springboks are ever the first to take the alarm, and to lead the retreating column. Pricking their taper ears, and elevating their graceful little heads upon the first appearance of any strange object, a dozen or more trot nimbly off to a distance, and having gazed impatiently for an instant to satisfy themselves of the actual presence of an enemy,--putting their white noses to the ground, they begin, in colonial phraseology, to ‘_pronken_’ or make ‘a brave show.’ Unfurling the snowy folds on their haunches so as to display around the elevated scut, a broad white gossamer disk, shaped like the spread tail of a peacock, away they all go with a succession of strange perpendicular bounds, rising with curved loins into the air, as if they had been struck with battledores--rebounding to the height of ten or twelve feet with the elasticity of corks thrown against a hard floor; vaulting over each other’s backs with depressed heads and stiffened limbs, as if engaged in a game of leap-frog; and after appearing for a second as if suspended in the air,--clearing at a single spring from ten to fifteen feet of ground without the smallest perceptible exertion. Down come all four feet together with a single thump, and nimbly spurning the earth beneath, away they soar again, as if about to take flight--invariably clearing a road or beaten track by a still higher leap than all--as if their natural disposition to regard man as an enemy indicated them to mistrust even the ground upon which he had trodden. “The ‘_trek bokken_’--as the Colonists are wont to term the immense migratory swarms of these antelopes which, to the destruction of every green herb, occasionally inundate the abodes of civilization--not only form one of the most remarkable features in the Zoology of Southern Africa, but may also be reckoned amongst the most extraordinary examples of the fecundity of animal life. To form any estimate of their numbers on such occasions would be perfectly impossible--the havoc committed in their onward progress falling nothing short of the ravages of a wasting swarm of locusts.