1833.] FOOD OF LARGE QUADRUPEDS. 85 



any sure guide that they formerly were clothed with a luxuriant 

 vegetation : I have no doubt that the sterile country a little 

 southward, near the Rio Negro, with its scattered thorny trees, 

 would support many and large quadrupeds. 



That large animals require a luxuriant vegetation, has been a 

 general assumption which has passed from one work to another ; 

 but I do not hesitate to say that it is completely false, and that 

 it has vitiated the reasoning of geologists on some points of great 

 interest in the ancient history of the world. The prejudice has 

 probably been derived from India, and the Indian islands, where 

 troops of elephants, noble forests, and impenetrable jungles, are 

 associated together in every one's mind. If, however, we refer 

 to any work of travels through the southern parts of Africa, we 

 shall find allusions in almost every page either to the desert cha- 

 racter of the country, or to the numbers of large animals inha- 

 biting it. The same thing is rendered evident by the many 

 engravings which have been published of various parts of the 

 interior. When the Beagle was at Cape Town, I made an 

 excursion of some days' length into the country, which at least 

 w r as sufficient to render that which I had read more fully intel- 

 ligible. 



Dr. Andrew Smith, who, at the head of his adventurous 

 party, has lately succeeded in passing the Tropic of Capricorn, 

 informs me that, taking into consideration the whole of the 

 southern part of Africa, there can be no doubt of its being a 

 sterile country. On the southern and south-eastern coasts there 

 are some fine forests, but with these exceptions, the traveller may 

 pass for days together through open plains, covered by a poor 

 and scanty vegetation. It is difficult to convey any accurate 

 idea of degrees of comparative fertility ; but it may be safely 

 said that the amount of vegetation supported at any one time* 

 by Great Britain, exceeds, perhaps even tenfold, the quantity on 

 an equal area, in the interior parts of Southern Africa. The 

 fact that bullock-waggons can travel in any direction, excepting 

 near the coast, without more than occasionally half an hour's 

 delay in cutting down bushes, gives, perhaps, a more definite 



* I mean by this to exclude the total amount, which may have been suc- 

 cessively produced and consumed during a given period. 



