122 SAVAGE SUDAN 



rat-snakes. [Note that, in my bedroom at Khartoum, I 

 had caught a similar snake (scientific name, Zamenis\ a 

 fortnight before.] A third carried a striped rat in his 

 talons, and Mr Butler records seeing one tackle a six- 

 foot cobra. 



This goshawk is designed in two sizes or it would be 

 more scientific to say that Nature has duplicated it in a 

 second type of half its bulk. The latter is distinguished 

 as Melierax gabar and curiouser and curiouser this 

 latter has a double form, the majority being ash-grey like 

 their bigger relative, while a minor proportion are entirely 

 black. We shot several of both sizes and the smaller in 

 the varying colours specified, both on the White and Blue 

 Niles ; but that the phenomenon is merely a colour - 

 dimorphism (such as occurs with the Arctic skua, 

 Sabine's snipe, reef-herons, etc.,) is demonstrated by the 

 fact that unfledged young in the same nest exhibit an 

 exactly similar variation. Teste, Sir Geoffrey Archer. 



THE TWO JEBELS OF WHITE NILE 



On all its 627-mile course, White Nile boasts but two 

 upstanding hills and they are little better than koppies 

 Jebelein and Jebel Ahmed Agha, distant 239 and 340 miles 

 from Khartoum respectively. The latter, though it stands 

 in the best of the big-game country, needs no words. 

 An isolated pyramid of black disintegrated shale, 350 feet 

 high, it is largely occupied by bees (which resent human 

 intrusion), and by little else of interest to a naturalist. 



Jebelein, on the contrary, proved a regular stronghold 

 both of wild beasts and of interesting birds. It comprises 

 a group of conical granite piles, 500 feet high, and cover- 

 ing miles of space. I remember my first evening there. 

 We had been required to bring home local examples of the 

 hyrax. It was nearly dusk when, having bagged a brace 

 or two of those beasties, a keen-eyed Arab lad, Achmet 

 by name, who had attached himself to me, eagerly pointed 

 to a crevice in the crags some 30 yards above. Quite 



