336 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



afternoon foraging on the ground for food, but we found them about 

 during the hottest hours of the day, running from clump to clump of 

 scattered bushes or herbs, often stopping motionless to look about, 

 and frequently making considerable journeys across open ground. 

 Their holes were almost always found to have several openings close 

 together, whether separate burrows or a common burrow was not 

 ascertained. It was noticeable that the Squirrels were confined al- 

 most wholly to sandy soil, and were practically absent from the hard 

 and sun-cracked " cotton soil." No doubt the latter is of too sticky 

 a consistency in the wet season and so unsuitable for burrowing. 

 Relatively fewer were seen on the Binder than on the Blue Nile. In 

 contrast to the ground squirrels of the genus Xerus seen in British 

 East Africa, this species when running away in alarm or otherwise 

 does not erect its tail at right angles to the body, but trails it inertly 

 behind. 



Paraxerus sp. 



Bush Squirrel. 



This is an extremely rare Squirrel in the Blue Nile valley and seems 

 to occur sparingly near the eastern portion along the Abyssinian border. 

 We met with it but twice and unfortunately failed to secure specimens. 

 A pair was seen in a leafy thorn tree a few miles from Fazogli and on 

 Gebel Fazogli a single one feeding among the branches of a white- 

 barked fig tree with thick green leaves, whose small berry-like fruits 

 are eagerly eaten by many species of birds and by the fruit bats. 



Felis leg roosevelti Heller. 

 Abyssinian Lion. 

 Felis leo roosevelti Heller, Smithsonian misc. coll., 1913, 61, no, 19, p. 2. 



Lions are now rare on the Blue Nile. Indeed, the only place where 

 we learned of them was at Omdurman, a small native village above 

 Karkoj, where Dr. Phillips heard one. It was at this same place that 

 I. C. Johnson in 1901, killed a lion; farther up at Soleil, he shot two 

 others, and found more on the southerly bank of the river opposite 

 Bados. Probably they have somewhat decreased in the twelve years 

 intervening for we did not learn of their presence except at Omdurman. 

 Possibly, also, there are more in this region during the rainy season. 



