TJie Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia 99 



the intelligence of these animals, which he vouches for as true, and 

 for some incredible instances of their sagacity, which the Arabs 

 vouch for as true. The fact of their placing sentinels, and those 

 sentinels keeping their posts, and subduing their appetites, while 

 all the rest of their fellows are plundering and gorging, is one of 

 the most extraordinary approaches to human intellect that we 

 know of 



Of carnivorous mammals, he met with the lion, which furnishes 

 some of the most sensational incidents in the book ; the leopard, 

 which he found devouring a snake that it had killed ; the hyjena 

 crocuta, which was abundant and generally unmolested, for sanitary 

 reasons. 



Of herbivorous animals, he gives a long list of antelopes, which 

 is not limited to Abyssinia, but includes all the species met with 

 by him, and by Von Heuglin, or one or other of them, in any 

 part of East Africa. This was supplied to him by Heuglin, and 

 will more properly come under notice in our account of that 

 gentleman's travels, which we must shortly pass under review, 

 merely observing that there is amongst them a new Abyssinian 

 species, the " Maarif," named after Sir Samuel by Heuglin. 



Besides antelopes, he encountered the Cape buffalo and the 

 Indian buffalo (naturally spoken of by Sir Samuel as a new species, 

 as he, doubtless, never expected to see his Ceylon and Hindostanee 

 acquaintance in the wilds of Abyssinia), the aboriginal wild ass, the 

 hippopotamus, the rhinoceros bicornis, the elephant, and the giraffe. 

 It would appear that many of these animals, although, perhaps, not 

 in the proper sense migratory, are so practically, being compelled 

 to shift their quarters regularly every year by flies, drought, &c. 

 The Seroot fly, which we shall have presently to mention, is one of 

 the chief agents in these migrations of the giraffe. Sir Samuel 

 mentions a circumstance of which we were not aware, viz., that the 

 long bones of the limbs of the giraffe are sohd, not hollow, as in 

 other ruminants : 



" It would be natural to suppose that the long legs of this animal would 

 furnish the perfection of marrow-bones, but these are a disappointment, as the 

 bones of the giraffe are solid, like those of the elephant or hippopotamus." 



It is rather curious to find the practical man pointing out, from 

 the experience of his desert dinner table, a fact like this, which has 

 escaped the attention of comparative anatomists. Professor Owen, 

 in his "Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of Vertebrates," 



