INTRODUCTION. 91 



wall of brass. " Hither shalt thou come, but no 

 further," with safety or comfort to thyself. This 

 command, although not pronounced, is a part of the 

 natural instinct of every animal in a state of nature. 

 Domestication can do much, but its effect is almost 

 entirely limited to those animals which have been 

 marked out by our Creator as destined to the ser- 

 vice of man. Let him be thankful for these excep- 

 tions, and not, with a modern philosopher, idly boast 

 of " mans conquest of nature" when his highest 

 faculties cannot domesticate a worm ! 



Of all the zoological provinces into which our 

 globe is divided, Africa is the most unexplored. The 

 land thirsty and desolate the people savage and 

 idolatrous the climate burning and pestilential; 

 we trace all that can impede and resist civilization, 

 and the prosecution of research. The interior of 

 Africa is like the fabled upas-tree of Java ; and of 

 nearly all those adventurous spirits who have set 

 out to gather its fruits, nothing remains but their 

 whitened bones. The zoology of Africa is even less 

 known than its geography. Its coasts, at least 

 throughout its circumference, have been traced out 

 by navigators ; but the natural history of only two 

 or three insignificant parts, when compared to the 

 whole, has been investigated ; while of the vast 

 regions intervening between these distant spots, we 

 know little or nothing. The ornithology of Egypt 

 was well explored in the direction of the march of 

 the French army, by the inimitable Savigny, and 

 those learned men who accompanied it; Riippell 



