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advice to you, Leopard, is to go into other spots as soon as you
can.'

And the Ethiopian said, 'That is all very fine, but I wish to
know whither the aboriginal Fauna has migrated.'

Then said Baviaan, 'The aboriginal Fauna has joined the
aboriginal Flora because it was high time for a change; and my
advice to you, Ethiopian, is to change as soon as you can.'

That puzzled the Leopard and the Ethiopian, but they set off to
look for the aboriginal Flora, and presently, after ever so many
days, they saw a great, high, tall forest full of tree trunks all
'sclusively speckled and sprottled and spottled, dotted and
splashed and slashed and hatched and cross-hatched with shadows.
(Say that quickly aloud, and you will see how very shadowy the
forest must have been.)

'What is this,' said the Leopard, 'that is so 'sclusively dark,
and yet so full of little pieces of light?'

'I don't know, said the Ethiopian, 'but it ought to be the
aboriginal Flora. I can smell Giraffe, and I can hear Giraffe,
but I can't see Giraffe.'

'That's curious,' said the Leopard. 'I suppose it is because
we have just come in out of the sunshine. I can smell Zebra, and
I can hear Zebra, but I can't see Zebra.'

'Wait a bit, said the Ethiopian. 'It's a long time since we've
hunted 'em. Perhaps we've forgotten what they were like.'

'Fiddle!' said the Leopard. 'I remember them perfectly on the
High Veldt, especially their marrow-bones. Giraffe is about
seventeen feet high, of a 'sclusively fulvous golden-yellow from
head to heel; and Zebra is about four and a half feet high, of
a'sclusively grey-fawn colour from head to heel.'

'Umm, said the Ethiopian, looking into the speckly-spickly
shadows of the aboriginal Flora-forest. 'Then they ought to
show up in this dark place like ripe bananas in a smokehouse.'

But they didn't. The Leopard and the Ethiopian hunted all day;
and though they could smell them and hear them, they never saw
one of them.

'For goodness' sake,' said the Leopard at tea-time, 'let us wait
till it gets dark. This daylight hunting is a perfect scandal.'

So they waited till dark, and then the Leopard heard something
breathing sniffily in the starlight that fell all stripy through
the branches, and he jumped at the noise, and it smelt like
Zebra, and it felt like Zebra, and when he knocked it down it
kicked like Zebra, but he couldn't see it. So he said, 'Be
quiet, O you person without any form. I am going to sit on your
head till morning, because there is something about you that I
don't understand.'

Presently he heard a grunt and a crash and a scramble, and the
Ethiopian called out, 'I've caught a thing that I can't see. It
smells like Giraffe, and it kicks like Giraffe, but it hasn't any
form.'

'Don't you trust it,' said the Leopard. 'Sit on its head till
the morning--same as me.

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