In Wildest Africa ^ 



the giraffes I feel a pleasure and delight in their quaint 

 coming and going, their heads appearing and disappearing, 

 there below me in the midst of the green bowers of 

 mimosa leaves, high o\er which my view ranges. What 

 laws must be at work here too, by whose operation I am 

 compelled to feel all this to be so beautiful, so harmonious, 

 so splendid ! I gras}) the meaning of the words : 

 '* Therefore I believe that life will first open its eyes in 

 tliat world of which Goethe said : ' There is still the life 

 of life, and this is only torm." " ' 



What a splendid sight there is from my lofty look-out ! 

 the whole of this mighty spectacle displays itself almost 

 without a sound that I can hear. Only a few voices of 

 birds, but no cry of any other animal reaches my ears. 

 But as the breeze rises more and more towards evening, 

 there begins in my immediate neighbourhood a strange 

 and beautiful concert, that is already familiar to me. And 

 now, as the wind blows more and more strongly through 

 the perforated gall-nuts that hang on every tree above 

 us, there resounds through the desert silence a strange 

 melodv, a strange language ol musical notes that only 

 the sound of the /l^olian liarp can to some degree 

 represent, 



Thc^se nut-galls on the acacias arc bored (juite through, 

 and in many cases become tlie dweUing-places ot small 

 ants. If one disturl)s them by tapping on the outside of 

 their strange habitation." they come swarming out to fight 



^ Houston Stuart Chamberlain, Imniaituil Kant. 

 " According to the latest observations of rrot'cssor \ng\vc Sj()stedt 

 these nut galls arc inhabited by ihrei' difrrrenl s[)e('ies of ants. 



