These, though simultaneous in execution, and therefore mutually supporting, were made by bodies apparently individually independent; sharing in this a characteristic commonly met in the Boer operations, and facilitated at once by their individualistic habits of life, their knowledge of the country, and their freedom from the organic interdependence which to regular troops becomes a second nature.

Every Boer organisation seems susceptible of immediate dissolution into its component units, each of independent {p.204} vitality, and of subsequent reunion in some assigned place; the individuals passing easily as innocent wayfarers or peasants among the population, with which they readily blend.

The quality has its strength; but it has also its weakness, and the latter exceeds.

This capacity for undergoing multifold subdivision, with retention of function by the several parts, is characteristic, in fact, of the simpler and lower forms of life, and disappears gradually as evolution progresses to higher orders.

In all military performance, it is not the faculty for segregation that chiefly tells.