350 NATURAL HISTORY OF AFRICA. 



success, that the shore was covered the whole length of th« 

 net with the fish they caught, though the net was in a bad 

 condition. I reckoned part of them, and judged that they 

 might in all be upwards of 6000, the least of them as large 

 as a fine carp. There you might see pilchards, rock-fish, 

 mullets, or gull-fish, of different sorts ; molebats, with other 

 fishes very little known. The negroes of the neighbouring 

 village took each their load, and the ship's crew filled their 

 boat until it was ready to sink, leaving the rest on the sea- 

 shore. In any other country, such a capture of fish would, 

 without all doubt, pass for a miracle."* 



The fossil fish of Africa are scarcely known. The fol- 

 lowing passage, in illustration of that curious branch, is 

 from Lichtenstein's Travels • — " In the slate-stone from 

 which the spring rose were the impressions of an innume- 

 rable multitude of fishes. We perceived this extraordinary 

 appearance first upon the surface ; but the impressions were 

 larger, more distinct, and finer in proportion as we broke 

 deeper and deeper into the stone. The form of the fish 

 resembled that of the eel, and the length of the largest was 

 about three feet. The brittleness of the slate made it im- 

 possible for us to get out a single specimen entire ; and the 

 fragments which we preserved, for the purpose of examin- 

 ing them at our leisure, were afterward destroyed by the 

 jolting of the wagon. The more I made myself acquainted 

 with this country by my subsequent travels, the more re- 

 markable did the phenomena appear to me, as being the 

 only remains of a former world which I found throughout 

 the whole of Southern Africa."t We must now proceed to 

 the next division of our subject. 



The MoUusca and Conchifera of Africa next demand our 

 attention. To these extensive classes belong whatever 

 species are known under the general names of shellfish 

 and shells. The precise localities of African conchology 

 are, in truth, so superficially ascertained that, even if 

 the portion of our present volume originally allotted to 

 the zoological department had not been already much more 

 than exhausted, we should have found great difficulty in 



* Voyage to Senegal, p. 178. 



t Travels in Southern Africa, vol. 1. p. 95 



