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both on account of its vast superiority over all other wild flesh, and from the circumstance of its being obtainable in larger quantities with comparatively less labour."
The eland breeds readily in confinement, and as it has been found to bear all the vicissitudes of an English climate with no more protection than is bestowed upon valuable cattle, how much easier and less expensive it will be to rear them in this colony, the climate and capabilities of which resemble their own; tor in its natural condition the eland frequents the open prairies and the low rocky hills interspersed with clumps of wood, but is never to be met with in a continuously wooded country, rejoicing especially in low belts of shaded hillocks and in the isolated groves of acacia capensis; large herds of them are also to be seen grazing like droves of oxen on the more verdant meadows, through which some silver rivulet winds in rainbow brightness betwixt fringes of sighing bulrushes.
Elands were first imported into England by the late Earl of Derby, in the year 1840. They bred; but he unfortunately parted with a male, and accident reduced his stock to a single female. Nothing discouraged, he recommenced, and in 1851 the animals arrived. They were young, and the first calf was not born until 1853. Since then the noble work has proceeded with great success. In the catalogue of the animals living at Knowsley, when the late Earl of Derby died, in 1851, figured five elands— two males and three females, one of which had been born there. The Zoological Society of London succeeded to this little herd by bequest. Lord Derby directed that whatever group of animals should be considered most eligible for the purposes of Acclimatisation, at the time of his death, should be transferred from the Knowsley collection, in its entirety, to the Society's possession. By the advice of the late Mr. Mitchell, Secretary to the Society, the elands were most judiciously chosen, and the result has justified all the expectations which he formed of them. Up to the 29th of April, 1859, twenty eland calves had been produced in England from the Knowsley stock, independently of any which may have been obtained from three of the earliest horn females which were exported to the continent.
The Zoological Society of London disposed of the increase, and from that source they have been extending over England and the Continent, they having realised (my friend Mr. Sclater, the present Secretary, informed me), ₤170 the pair—male and female—and up to 1860 the Society had remaining in their collection five females and one male, all in good health. Herds
