258 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Wlien we regard tlie fauna of Madagascar and of New Zealand 

 we are struck by the great resemblance between them, from the 

 points of view of their recent and ancient vertebrate fauna. These 

 resemblances suggest the past existence of relations between these 

 two lands now separated by a wide expanse of sea, and this agrees 

 with geological observations. — Translated for the Popular Science 

 Montldy from La Nature. 



SKETCH OF FKEDERICK C. SELOUS. 



THE description of Selous, in Men and Women of the Time, 

 as " explorer, naturalist, and sportsman," is suggestive of the 

 manner in which his career has been developed and his fame has 

 grown. Beginning his active life as a mere hunter of big game in 

 the wilds of South Africa, and known at first only as a sportsman, 

 he has become recognized as one of the leading, most intelligent, 

 and most efficient explorers of his time, and is accepted as the most 

 eminent authority respecting what relates to the large and impor- 

 tant region of -Mashonaland. 



Fkederick Courtenay Selous was born in London, the son of 

 a father of Huguenot extraction and of a mother who, descended 

 from the Bruces of Clackmannan, could count Robert Bruce among 

 her ancestors, and was also related to Bruce, the Abyssinian trav- 

 eler. He was taught at Bruce Castle, Tottenham, and then went 

 to school at Rugby, where he distinguished himself by his activity, 

 which was displayed in his high spirits and love of violent mischief 

 and by his personal courage to such an extent that his school- 

 fellows wittily nicknamed him " Zealous." 



Leaving Rugby when sixteen or seventeen years old, he spent 

 two years in Switzerland and Germany, studying at l^^eufchatel and 

 Wiesbaden. His hardy activity seems to have been as marked iu 

 Germany as at Rugby, for it is recorded of him that he attracted 

 some notice in the papers by jumping into the Rhine in Avinter 

 after a wild duck which he had shot. He was not dressed for a 

 swim, and, his great coat and top boots becoming filled with water, 

 he had much difficulty in getting to shore with his game. His de- 

 termination to achieve a career in South Africa by hunting and 

 collecting specimens was apparently reached while he was still 

 a youth, and at nineteen years of age he sailed from England, to 

 land at Algoa Bay in 1871. Hunting was his object, as is sub- 

 stantially confessed in the title of his first book, A Hunter's Wan- 

 derings in Africa. The book won instant recognition as a story of 



