THE REDISCOVERED COUNTRY 131 



minded, and some of them — the various sun-birds es- 

 pecially — are the gaudiest and most glittering of 

 created beings outside the insect world. Some have tails 

 three or four times their o\\ti length, and some have 

 no tails at all. Near water-pools they are incredibly 

 numerous, so that the aggregate of their tiny weights 

 bends down quite good-sized saplings. Some have 

 a good deal to say about the situation and some are 

 disdainfully silent. 



Beside these little fellows are many larger birds. 

 Grouse whirr away, or rocket high; guinea fowl, con- 

 sulting each other anxiously in clucking undertones, 

 dodge ahead ; hornbills swoop aloft ; little green parrots 

 buzz about in a sort of cinematograph fashion; an 

 occasional profane ibis — profane in language though 

 "sacred" by name — flops off with a string of oaths. 



Gray or green little monkeys gallop away ahead, or 

 clamber up things to take a look. Baboons bark 

 hoarsely, run a little way, climb up something, shake the 

 foliage violently, and disappear. The souls of aviators 

 awaiting human incarnation buzz aloft on the tiny 

 aeroplane-like bodies of huge beetles. Butterflies like 

 flowers cling to the tiny twigs of bushes; and flowers 

 like butterflies seem always on the point of flight. 



And of animals there is no end. Some tiny ante- 

 lope — a dik-dik, an oribi, a steinbuck, a bushbuck — is 

 always scrambling madly away from fairly beneath 

 one's feet only to dive headlong into another bit of 



