Traps for game are of many kinds and varying degrees of ingenuity. For large animals, such as the elephant, hippo, or buffalo, there is the pitfall, dug with sloping sides, and sometimes planted with sharp stakes at the bottom, which is such a frequent cause of accident to unwary travellers. It is covered over with reeds and the ground made to look as natural as possible. Old disused pits are no less dangerous, because the grass and shrubs grow over them and hide them from view. They are dug right in the track of the animal in a place where it is found to pass often—as in going down to a stream to drink. In former times, fences (sometimes extending over miles of country) were made to guide buck into these pits. Another trap for lions or leopards is made by erecting two parallel fences of stout stakes. A heavy log is supported at the further end between the fences and the bait placed beneath it, so that it cannot be seized without pushing aside the slight support; the animal is then killed by the falling log. Smaller traps are set for the different kinds of wild-cat, and baited with mice. Another trap often set for hippos or elephants is a heavy log hung vertically above the pathway, with a poisoned spear fixed in its lower end; the animal treads on a catch which releases the string holding the weighted spear. The poison for spears and arrows is in most cases strophanthus. Going along one of the paths leading through the bush, one sometimes notices a curious little arrangement of sticks and string, like a narrow gate, about eighteen inches high. This is a _msampa_ trap, designed to catch a buck by the leg, or smaller animals, which run close to the ground, by the neck. A cord with a running noose at one end is made fast by the other to the top of a springy sapling, which is bent down and kept in position by an easily released catch; the noose is then stretched open between the upright sticks, but so as to slip off easily as soon as the animal treads on the catch, when the sapling flies up and immediately tightens the cord. Several kinds of smaller traps are set for field-rats and mice; one is a long narrow funnel, woven of slips of bamboo, with the ends pointing inwards at the mouth, so that a rat can get in but not out again; the stretching of the slips narrows the entrance, and there is no room to turn round. Some of these traps are woven of _mapira_ stalks or palm fibre. It might be supposed that any mouse could easily gnaw its way out; but the trap is not set and left; it is placed in the creatures’ run, and the grass is beaten to drive them into it, when they are at once taken out and despatched. Sometimes the animal is driven into a trap like this by a dog.