To resume my narrative, however. As above stated, in the ardour of digging bulbs, I had forgotten my dogs, when Napoleon called my attention to their baying far down in the recesses of the kloof. Hastily picking up my gun, lying close at hand, and he hurriedly cramming without mercy into a sack my green-grocery-looking bunches of roots, we started off in hot haste to the spot to which the dogs were calling our attention. On our way we met them coming back; they were, however, eagerly enough disposed to return, so that we knew by that sign the object of their late _rencontre_ was not supposed by them to be very far off. And so it was, for we soon found ourselves amidst a grinning lot of large, brown, Cape baboons. They were clinging up aloft to the graceful creepers that festoon so beautifully the trees in South African woods, and looking like so many hideous, hairy-bellied spiders on a beautiful lace-work of Nature’s weaving. I felt inclined to give some of them, who looked particularly out of place in that sylvan retreat, a peppering of shot; but their wonderful performances on the tight-ropes around them soon smoothed the wrinkles of my indignation. These acrobats performed extraordinary feats. They shot from branch to branch, from wave to wave, like flying-fish, or as pantless Zazel shoots from the cannon’s mouth to her swinging rope. This performance created intense excitement, and the barking of the dogs seemed to applaud this aerial description of St Vitus’s Dance. It was really affecting to see the solicitude of the parents as their little progeny hopped from tree to tree after them, now holding out their arms to receive them as they landed, now thrusting back a creeper to bring it nearer within their reach. It was a real exhibition of baboon agility, of which we see but a faint parody in the Westminster Aquarium, by the Darwinian selections among the human bipeds. An accident befalling a clumsy little fellow as he stumbled on the branch of an iron-wood tree, he came to the ground with a thud. In one minute the poor chap was torn to pieces by the dogs. This was more than his parents could stand; down they came to the ground, followed closely by the rest of the tribe, and a real battle ensued between them and the dogs.