In Wildest Africa -^ 



the giraffes I feel a pleasure and delight in their quaint 

 coming and going, their heads appearing and disappearing, 

 there below me in the midst of the green bowers of 

 mimosa leaves, high over which my view ranges. What 

 laws must be at work here too, by whose operation I am 

 compelled to feel all this to be so beautiful, so harmonious, 

 so splendid ! I grasp the meaning of the words : 

 *' Therefore I believe that life will first open its eyes in 

 that world of which Goethe said : ' There is still the life 

 of life, and this is only form.' " ^ 



What a splendid sight there is from my lofty look-out ! 

 the whole of this mighty spectacle displays itself almost 

 without a sound that I can hear. Only a few voices of 

 birds, but no cry of any other animal reaches my ears. 

 But as the breeze rises more and more towards evening, 

 there begins in my immediate neighbourhood a strange 

 and beautiful concert, that is already familiar to me. And 

 now, as the wind blows more and more strongly through 

 the perforated gall-nuts that hang on every tree above 

 us, there resounds through the desert silence a strange 

 melody, a strange language of musical notes that only 

 the sound of the y^olian harp can to some degree 

 represent. 



These nut-galls on the acacias are bored quite through, 

 and in many cases become the dwelling-places of small 

 ants. If one disturbs them by tapping on the outside of 

 their strange habitation,^ they come swarming out to fight 



^ Houston Stuart Chamberlain, Iiiimanuel Kant. 

 2 According to the latest observations of Professor Yngwe Sjostedt 

 these nut-galls, are inhabited by three different species of ants. 



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