^ Fauna : Mammals 



ception) the toes are armed with broad hoof-Hke nails, little 

 hoofs in tact. The exception is a very remarkable one. The 

 innermost or second toe (the hallux or big toe is wanting) 

 is armed not with a hoot but with a long curved claw, thus 

 recalling one of the features ot the lemurs. There may be 

 more in this than a mere accidental resemblance. The lemurs 

 seem to be connected by tossil forms with the basal stock from 

 which originated the ungulates, and there is much else about 

 the hyraxes which suggests their descent from a very primitive 

 and generalised type ot mammal, that in relationships was 

 not far removed from the parent forms ot the Anthropoidea. 



The tree hyraxes are nocturnal in habits in Liberia as in 

 other parts of forested Africa. They eat leaves chiefly, and 

 dwell in holes in the trees, which they enlarge and excavate with 

 their gnawing teeth. As on Kilimanjaro and Ruwenzori, so in 

 Liberia, they terrify the natives by their weird night-cries, 

 which rinp- throup;h the forest. 



The Elephant is still abundantly met with in Liberia at a 

 distance of forty or fifty miles from the coast, and thence inland 

 till the Mandingo Plateau is reached. In fact, the dense forest 

 is full of elephants, to a degree which sometimes makes travelling 

 dangerous, for the Liberian elephant seems unusually prone to 

 attack mankind without provocation. The elephants do enor- 

 mous damage to native plantations, but if they are undisturbed 

 in these ravages do not seem to interfere with the native houses. 

 Either they are not so abundant, however, as one or two centuries 

 ago, or the natives are more cowardly about attacking them, for 

 the output of ivory from Liberia has dwindled to a very small 

 quantity ; whereas when the land was first visited by Europeans 

 elephants' tusks were brought for sale in large quantities. 



Captain Scarvell Cape, who explored the western parts of 

 Liberia in 1903, considered that elephants were still very 



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