on) 
al 
78) 
u ON THE GEOGRAPHY OF ANIMALS, 
known to be dispersed over 
nearly every country ; but 
an extraordinary species, 
the long-shafted goatsucker 
(Macrodipteryx Africanus 
Sw., fig. 41.), may be 
named as one of the most 
curious birds of Western 
le Africa: it is not bigger 
i hig than a thrush; but from 
/ each wing projects a feather 
/ | nearly twenty inches in 
length, with theshaft naked 
except at the tip: it has 
Ry fi hitherto been found only at 
M4 i, Sierra Leone. 
Hy Vy (138.) The rivers and 
‘4 coasts abound with fish, 
beautiful in their colours, and nutritious as food ; 
while the swarms of alligators, and the different 
snakes and reptiles, need not be dwelt upon. Many of 
the serpents, however, are not only harmless, but 
highly beneficial. Mr. Smeathman, who lived many 
years on these coasts, observes that the snakes get into 
the thatch of the houses in pursuit of the rats and 
cockroaches ; the former being very harmless, and the 
two latter particularly destructive. The patient negroes 
are not without consolation amidst this heterogeneous 
crowd of inmates. They see the spiders always upon 
the watch for wasps and cockroaches; the lizards, 
again, attack the spiders; and these latter not unfre- 
quently fall a prey to the fowls, as the rats do to the 
snakes. 
(139.) On the entomology we may observe, that the 
notes of Mr. Smeathman convey such a lively picture 
of African zoology, that we shall repeat it nearly in his 
own words, particularly as they are contained in the 
preface to a work*, where they are not likely to be 
* Drury’s Exotic Insects, 3 vols. 4to. 
