Recenthj published Oniit/io/ogical Works. 405 



We confess to be patlier disappoiute;! with Miss Kingslcy's 

 narratiA-e of her travels ia West Africa, although there is 

 much information to be gathered out of it. But compres- 

 sion and a slight improvement in style would have made it 

 uiucli more readable. Miss Kingsley deserves great credit 

 for her ascent of the Ogowe, and for tlie excellent collection 

 of the fishes of that river which Dr. Giinther has worked out 

 for her. To birds, unfortunately, she paid little attention ; 

 at any rate, she did not collect them, " hating to hav^e them 

 killed anyhow.^^ But there is a nice passage in her book 

 on the birds of the Upper Ogowe about the Ground-Horn- 

 bill (Bucorvus cafer), which we beg leave to copy : — 



" I notice great quantities of birds about — great Horubills, 

 vividly-coloured Kingfishers, and for the first time the great 

 Vulture I have often heard of, and the skin of which I will 

 take home before I mention even its approximate spread of 

 wing. There are also noble white Cranes, and flocks of 

 small black and white birds, new to me, with heavy razor- 

 shaped bills, reminding one of the Devonian Puffin [no doubt 

 some species of Toccus]. The Hornbill is perhaps the most 

 striking in appearance. It is the size of a small or, say, a 

 good-sized hen-Turkey. * Gray Shirt ' says the flocks, which 

 are of eight or ten, always have the same quantity of cocks 

 and hens, and that they live together ' white man fashion,' 

 i. e. each couple keeping together. They certainly do a 

 great deal of courting, the cock filling out his wattles on his 

 neck, like a Turkey, and spreading out his tail with great 

 pomp and ceremony, but very awkwardly. To see Horu- 

 bills on a bare sandbank is a solemn sight, but when they 

 are dodging about in the hippo grass they sink ceremony 

 and roll and waddle, looking — my man said — for snakes, 

 and the little sandfish, which are close in under the bank, 

 and their killing way of dropping their jaws — I should say 

 opening their bills — when they are alarmed, is comic. I 

 saw two or three of them in a line on a long branch, stand- 

 ing stretched up to their full height, their great eyes opened 

 wide, and all with their great beaks open, evidently listening 

 for something. Their cry is most peculiar, and can only be 



