KARROO BEASTS, BIRDS AND REPTILES. 239 



Egypt. Indeed, all the sacred animals and birds of 

 Egyptian mythology, and many of the other creatures 

 which are depicted in so life-like a manner on the walls 

 of Nile temples and tombs, are to be found at this day 

 in South Africa. Anubis the jackal; the grey ibis, 

 now extinct in Egypt, but common enough in the Cape 

 Colony, and audacious insult to that learned god to 

 whom he was sacred irreverently and absurdly named 

 by the colonials " oddida ; " the hawk Horus, with just 

 the same plump little body, round baby-face, and deli- 

 cately-tinted plumage of softest French grey and white 

 which you see again and again in those comical, toy- 

 like little wooden images in the museum at Cairo ; 

 the wild geese, with the identical curious markings of 

 those which, in the oldest picture in the world, may be 

 seen in that same museum ; the scarab, rolling his un- 

 wieldy ball with Atlas-like efforts ; all these are at 

 home on the Karroo farms. 



Cynocephalus, indeed, was very much more at home 

 at Swaylands than we liked, and would often frighten 

 the ostriches into a wild state of panic, with the usual 

 inevitable result of broken legs. On mountain excur- 

 sions you frequently hear his surly bark, and some- 

 times see him looking out defiantly at you from behind 

 rock or bush, where possibly you have disturbed him 

 in the midst of an exciting lizard-hunt, or careful 

 investigation of loose stones in search of the centi- 

 pedes, scorpions and beetles hidden beneath. These 

 creatures, uninviting though they appear to us, are 

 among his favourite dainties, and he catches them with 



