figures it as if it were one of the cétacés souffleurs of Cuvier?' 'Softly,' we replied; have you ever seen the hippopotamus in the water? And may not the ideas which you have derived from that dried and shrivelled skin set on four posts in your museum, give you a more erroneous notion of the amphibious beast than the sketch taken from the life by this lion-slayer?" The truth is that now, thanks to the Viceroy of Egypt, our Zoological Society, and their active friend the Hon. C. Murray, any one may see the young hippopotamus perform on a small scale what Mr. Cumming has for the first time portrayed in the full-grown animal. As the fat observed of all observers' rises towards the surface of his bath, he sometimes expels the long pent-up breath by a sudden snort and erection of the nostrils, which drive up two little fountains of spray. Add, then, to the difference of size, the blood poured into the throat and nasal passages from the wounds of the bulletsmashed head of the stunned individual - the partner in the strange aquatic waltz represented in the frontispiece of the volume cited and we find ample grounds for the feature which excited the sceptical ebullition of our technical friend. We will say more: after testing, where such test was applicable, every fact recorded by Mr. Cumming regarding the habits and actions of the living animals by what is known of their anatomical structure, we have found his statements, with one unimportant exception, to stand that test; and his very ignorance of the organization, which would suggest to the physiologist the habits and actions portrayed in the book, gives the best testimony to the accuracy of the

hunter's sketches.

The author, a younger son (as we understand) of Sir W. Cumming Gordon of Altyre, Bart., appears, after abundant early Highland experience as a deer-stalker, &c., to have spent some years in military service both in India and in the Cape colony; but we gather that he had quitted the army before the adventures here described were begun. On his first expedition as a hunter and trader, he left Graham's Town in October, 1843; reached the country of the Griquà Hottentots, and crossed the Vaal river near lat. 28' south; recrossed it, and returned to Colesberg in April, 1844. Here he organised a second campaign, and amongst other things loaded up' with a number of common muskets being the most available articles to barter for ivory with the tribes of the far interior' (vol. i. p. 220). These he afterwards turned to good account, and regretted that he did not possess ten times as many of them. He extended his wanderings to the Bamanguato country, as far north as lat. 22 south, and was again at Graham's Town by February, 1845. Allowing himself a little repose at this place, he started afresh for the Bamanguato, pushing

B 2

as

westward

westward as far as Letlocbee, where he bags his fiftieth elephant,' and once more sees Graham's Town in February, 1846. There, he informs us, he sold his ivory well'-realizing by this article and ostrich feathers somewhere about 10001. Encouraged by this success, and excited rather than satiated by the murderous conditions of its attainment, he set out for the fourth time on the 11th of March, 1846; tried a short cut through the territories of Mahura, chief of the Batlapis, to the eastward of his former track, and travelling northward reached the river Limpopo, probably in the latitude of the great lake Ngami. On the Limpopo he slays many hippopotamuses and rare antelopes, and returns, crossing the Orange river, to Colesberg in February, 1848. Mr. Cumming finally started on a fifth expedition in the following month, again reached the Limpopo, shot his hundredth elephant, and after much exciting sport with the hippopotamus, &c., &c., got back in March, 1849, to Port Elizabeth, by way of Graff Reinett. At length he safely arrived in England with his valuable collection of sporting trophies and his Cape waggon, weighing altogether upwards of thirty tons,'-all which may now be seen at the Chinese Gallery, in London,' admission Is.(Introduction, p. viii.)

We feel bound to say that we give entire credit to the truthfulness of the book, which is assuredly one of extraordinary interest after its kind. There is an unavoidable sameness in the character of the incidents recorded, and the endless and too often useless slaughter of God's creatures will be revolting to most minds. Yet the style is so natural and fresh from the scene, the scene itself in the far interior of Africa so new, and the hazards attending the chace of the formidable beasts of those wilds so great, that it is difficult to lay the volumes down until the issue of each adventure, as they rapidly follow one another, has been ascertained. In fact, the narrative has the charm of a vivid romance—and the professed novelist may study with envy the native spring of its sinewy style. We, however, have perused the work a second time with a definite aim; that, namely, of extracting whatever seemed to throw new light on the natural history of the animals whose habits have thus been observed on so wide a theatre, and have been recorded without reference to zoological theories and classifications. And with this view we have studied the trophies brought home by the author-too often, unfortunately, selected with supreme indifference to the requirements of the scientific naturalist-and have compared them with his descriptions so as to determine the exact species which in each case had exercised the hunter's skill or tested his courage.

The great peculiarity of the zoology of South Africa is the

predominance

predominance of that particular form of the Ruminant order of Mammalia called Antelope. The horns of the ruminants, as most of our readers may know, are of two kinds in respect of substance. One consists of almost solid bone: such horns, or more properly antlers,' are peculiar to the deer tribe; they are usually branched, and are shed and renewed annually. The other kind of horn consists of a cone or core of bone covered by a sheath of true horny matter; such horns are never shed, but are increased by annual growths: the ruminants possessing them are called hollow-horned;' they comprise the ox, sheep, goat, and antelope-and, save the anomalously horned giraffe, no other kind of ruminants but these exist in South Africa. No species of deer, roe, stag, or elk, for example, greeted the eyes of our stalker: their place in nature is taken by the hollow-horned ruminants, and chiefly by the antelopes, which have been created in unusual numbers and variety of specific forms, constituting a series that fills up the wide hiatus between the goat and the ox, and on which the ingenuity of the 'splitting naturalist' has been, and still is exercised in the manufacture of subgenera and the imposition thereon of long and hard names. Great is the relief to turn from the toilsome investigation of the respective merits of the subgenera Catoblepas, Aigoceros, Acronotus, Cephalopus, Eleotragus, Oreotragus, Calotragus, &c., of a Blainville, a Smith, or a Gray, to the fresh pictures of the living habits of the beautiful and unconscious subjects of those Greek compounds, as they have been witnessed by our author on their own wooded hills and park-like plains.

The first he fell in with was the Springbok (Antilope euchore) —which graceful and agile species abounded in countless numbers on the fertile flats along the banks of the Brak river. It has earned its name from the extraordinary and almost perpendicular leaps which it makes when started, especially if chased by a dog:

They bound to the height of ten or twelve feet, with the elasticity of an India - rubber ball, clearing at each spring from twelve to fifteen feet of ground, without apparently the slightest exertion. In performing the spring, they appear for an instant as if suspended in the air, when down come all four feet again together, and, striking the plain, away they soar again as if about to take flight. The herd only adopt this motion for a few hundred yards, when they subside into a light elastic trot, arching their graceful necks and lowering their noses to the ground, as if in sportive mood. Presently pulling up, they face about, and reconnoitre the object of their alarm. In crossing any path or waggon-road on which men have lately trod, the springbok invariably clears it by a single surprising bound; and when a herd of perhaps many thousands have to cross a track of the sort, it is extremely beautiful to see how each performs this feat, so suspicious

are

are they of the ground on which their enemy, man, has trodden. They bound in a similar manner when passing to leeward of a lion, or any other animal of which they entertain an instinctive dread. The accumulated masses of living creatures which the springboks exhibit on the greater migrations is utterly astounding. They have been well compared to the swarms of locusts. Like them they consume every green thing in their course, laying waste vast districts in a few hours, and ruining in a single night the fruits of the farmers' toil. The course adopted is generally such as to bring them back to their own country by a route different from that by which they set out. Thus their line of march sometimes forms something like a vast oval, or an extensive square, of which the diameter may be some hundred miles, and the time occupied in this migration may vary from six months to a year.'-vol. i. p. 70.

The fantastic Wildebeest (Antilope Gnu, Linn., Gmel.),* with the head and horns of a buffalo and the mane and tail of a horse, supported on agile antelopine legs, next attracted the dangerous attention of our author, and he proceeded in quest of them to the plains beyond Thebus mountain, where he was informed they abounded.

'At night I took up a position in an old shooting-hole beside the vley' (i. e. a fountain or spring of fresh water), to watch for wildebeests. Several jackals, wildebeests, quaggas, and hyænas came to drink during the night, but, not being able to see the sight of my rifle, I did not fire. Here I remained until the bright star of morning had risen far above the horizon, and day was just beginning to dawn when, gently raising my head and looking round, I saw, on one side of me, four wildebeests, and on the other side ten. They were coming to drink; slowly and suspiciously they approached the water, and, having convinced themselves that all was right, they trotted boldly up and commenced drinking. Selecting the finest bull, I fired, and sent a bullet through his shoulder, when, splashing through the water, he bounded madly forward, and, having run about a hundred yards, rolled over in the dewy grass.'-vol. i. p. 83.

In broad day-light, and when roaming over their native plains, the bearing of the black Gnus is bold, and widely different from that at the night-season when their carnivorous enemies are abroad. Unlike most other antelopes, they do not leave their ground when disturbed, unless it be by a large field of hunters :

'Wheeling about in endless circles, and performing the most extraordinary variety of intricate evolutions, the shaggy herds of these fierce-looking animals are for ever capering and gambolling round the hunter on every side. While he is riding hard to obtain a family

*Boselaphus of De Blainville, Connochaetes of Lichtenstein, and, as if these were not enough, Catoblepas of Gray!! That Elian had this South African species in view when he described his KаTwßλeras, is more than problematical.

shot

shot of a herd in front of him, other herds are charging down wind on his right and left, and, having described a number of circular movements, they take up positions upon the very ground across which he rode only a few minutes before. Singly, and in small troops of four or five individuals, the old bull wildebeests may be seen stationed at intervals throughout the plains, standing motionless during a whole forenoon, coolly watching with a philosophic eye the movements of the other game, eternally uttering a loud snorting noise, and also a short, sharp cry which is peculiar to them. When the hunter approaches these old bulls, they commence whisking their long white tails in a most eccentric manner; then springing suddenly into the air, they begin prancing and capering, and pursue each other in circles at their utmost speed. Suddenly they all pull up together to overhaul the intruder, when two of the bulls will often commence fighting in the most violent manner, dropping on their knees at every shock; then quickly wheeling about, they kick up their heels, whirl their tails with a fantastic flourish, and scour across the plain enveloped in a cloud of dust.'-vol. i. p. 181.

Our author adds a remark which we do not remember to have work of natural history, viz., that the skin of the gnu seen in any has a delicious smell of the grass and wild herbs on which these animals lie and feed.

The Gemsbok (Antilope oryx), the hunting of which is more trying to horses than any other sport in South Africa, is remarkable for its long and sharp straight horns, with which it sometimes transfixes the lion when attacked by him. An old Boer and keen sportsman, who recollected when lions abounded in the Karroo district, near Colesberg, related to Mr. Cumming that he had seen this antelope beat off the lion, and he had also come upon the carcasses of both rotting on the plain, the body of the lion being transfixed by the long sharp horns of the gemsbok, so that it could not extract them, and thus both had perished together. Mr. Cumming regards this as one of the most beautiful and remarkable of the antelope tribe :

but one.

'It is the animal which is supposed to have given rise to the fable of the unicorn, from its long straight horns, when seen en profil, so exactly covering one another as to give it the appearance of having It possesses the erect mane, long, sweeping black tail, and general appearance of the horse, with the head and hoofs of an antelope. It is robust in its form, squarely and compactly built, and very noble in its bearing. Its height is about that of an ass, and in colour it slightly resembles that animal. The beautiful black bands which eccentrically adorn its head, giving it the appearance of wearing a stallcollar, together with the manner in which the rump and thighs are painted, impart to it a character peculiar to itself. The adult male measures three feet ten inches in height at the shoulder.

'The gemsbok thrives and attains high condition in barren regions,

where