30 Wild Life in Central Africa. 



man's blood was in bad order, and he scratched the 

 skin off to get relief, it might end in an attack of blood 

 poisoning. 



There is another variety of this buffalo bean Angoni 

 name, kasi which the natives eat by breaking the pods 

 and cooking the beans, from which they remove the hard 

 skins after boiling well. The Achewa race call the bean 

 chitaidza. One of the worst districts here for the buffalo 

 bean is Mlanje, where the vegetation is rank and tropical. 



Scrubb's ammonia eases the itching, but then a sportsman 

 cannot carry a bottle of it with him when tramping in the 

 bush, so he will need to put up with it, and he is sure to 

 meet it sooner or later if he shoots here when the grass is 

 long. 



There is another plant which flowers annually which is 

 very irritating and makes one cough hard as the dust gets 

 down one's throat, but this bush is only present in some 

 districts. 



Of course there are plenty of thorns and stinging plants, 

 which, not being a botanist, I cannot give the scientific 

 names of ; but after a few years, insects that sting and 

 plants that irritate are not much noticed, as the skin gets 

 hardened and inured to them. The newcomer always 

 suffers more than the old hand, as his skin is soft and his 

 blood rich, a fact that insects seem to find out soon. 



June 13 saw me on the tramp again, and on this day I 

 went through some lovely undulating country, just like a 

 wild, untended park at home, although, of course, the 

 vegetation was very different. I saw several oribis and let 

 them go, for it is a mistake firing at such small fry, as the 

 shots put other game on the qui vive. 



I have often thought a " Maxim Silencer" fitted to the 

 rifle would be handy, and yet it does not seem quite sport 

 to use such a contrivance, as the game has quite a heavy 

 enough handicap against it already, with rifles of great 

 velocity and killing power. 



While going along we suddenly disturbed a kudu bull in 

 some thick bush, and as kudu bulls do not usually give one 



