ON THK GEOGRAPHY OF ANIMALS. 



known to be dispersed over 

 nearly every country ; but 

 an extraordinary species, 

 the long-shafted goatsucker 

 (Macrodipteryx Africanus 

 Sw., fig. 41.), may be 

 named as one of the most 

 curious birds of Western 

 Africa: it is not bigger 

 than a thrush ; but from 

 each wing projects a feather 

 nearly twenty inches in 

 length, with the shaft naked 

 except at the tip : it has 

 hitherto been found only at 

 Sierra Leone. 



(138.) The rivers and 

 coasts abound with fish, 

 beautiful in their colours, and nutritious as food ; 

 while the swarms of alligators, and the different 

 snakes and reptiles, need not be dwelt upon. Many of 

 the serpents, however, are not only harmless, but 

 highly beneficial. Mr. Smeathman, who lived many 

 years on these coasts, observes that the snakes get into 

 the thatch of the houses in pursuit of the rats and 

 cockroaches ; the former being very harmless, and the 

 two latter particularly destructive. The patient negroes 

 are not without consolation amidst this heterogeneous 

 crowd of inmates. They see the spiders always upon 

 the watch for wasps and cockroaches ; the lizards, 

 again, attack the spiders ; and these latter not unfre- 

 quently fall a prey to the fowls, as the rats do to the 

 snakes. 



(139-) On the entomology we may observe, that the 

 notes of Mr. Smeathman convey such a lively picture 

 of African zoology, that we shall repeat it nearly in his 

 own words, particularly as they are contained in the 

 preface to a work*, where they are not likely to be 

 * Drury's Exotic Insects, 3 vols. 4ta 



