BIRDS. 323 



We have now enumerated, with occasion^ brief descrip- 

 tions and interspersed notices of their history and habits, 

 the greater proportion of the more remaikable quadrupeds 

 of Africa. To extend the hst would have been both easy 

 and agreeable ; but we trust that the preceding sketch will 

 suffice to exhibit the prevailing and peculiar features of 

 this branch of African zoology, even though our confined 

 limits should have excluded many minor details, not in 

 themselves devoid of interest, though unessential to our 

 present undertaking. The great preponderance of the 

 antelope tribe, the existence of the giraffe and the hippopo- 

 tamus, and the numerous troops of equine animals, such as 

 the zebra and the quagga, may be stated as forming the 

 principal zoological characters of this extensive continent. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



Natural History of the Birds of Africa, 



We shall next take a rapid survey of some other depart- 

 ments of the natural history of Africa ; and continuing, as 

 we have commenced, with a certain degree of systematic 

 arrangement, the second great class which attracts the 

 attention of the traveller is that of birds. 



The arid and wide-spread plains which compose so large 

 a portion of this continent, are unfavourable to the existence 

 and multiplication of the feathered race. Yet the more 

 umbrageous banks of rivers, the extensive forests which 

 here and there prevail to check the drifting of the desert- 

 sand, and those green and grateful oases which towards 

 evening cast their far shadows across a waterless land, 

 harbour in their cool recesses many a gorgeous form of fea- 

 thered life. Nor can we suppose that the mountain-summits, 

 and those Sierras which occasionally interrupt the horizontal 

 view of the bleached wilderness, are uninhabited by birds of 

 prey, eagle-eyed and swift of wing, there perched securely 

 amid their rocky fortresses, but ever ready to descend with 

 eager cry, when the blast of the simoom overwhelms the 



