Note 298 — Chapter XXV · THE KESTRIL[283]

“... When the pups [greyhound] are three or four months old, their education commences. The boys drive out of their holes the jerboa or the rat called “boualal” and set the pups at them. The latter by degrees get excited, dash after them at full speed, bark furiously at their holes, and only give up the pursuit to begin another. At the age of five or six months they are assigned a prey more difficult to catch—the hare....”—The Horses of the Sahara and the Manners of the Desert, by E. Daumas. “McMaster says of its agility [the Indian Jerboa-rat or Kangaroo-rat—Gerbillus indicus]: ‘I have seen them when released from a trap baffle and elude dogs in the most extraordinary manner by wonderful jumps made over the backs, and apparently into the very teeth of their pursuers’.”—Mammalia of India; Sterndale.