PREFACE.
T he following pages record th e impressions of a n a tu ralist,
who, during a twelve months’ business sojourn
in the Transvaal, deprived o f th e society of family and
friends, employed the whole of his leisure time in th a t
most delightful consolation—zoological recreation.
In my schoolboy days a journey through the Transvaal
would have almost attained the dignity of an exploration
; now Pretoria can be reached in three weeks’
time from London, and the once long wagon-trek from
the Cape is replaced by less than two days’ train and a
little more than two days’ coach service. But this
facility of transit, so valued by the business man and so
necessary to the material development of the country,
has deprived the sportsman of a hunting-ground and
curtailed the view of the naturalist. No longer do vast
herds of ruminants roam over these solitary plains, for
when commerce reached the land, and bid for the skins
of the buck and antelope, the Boer accepted the price
and slaughtered, if not actually exterminated, the finest