9812 Birds. 



position had already set in, and so the snake had to be thrown away: 

 it was a small specimen of the Bucephalus viridis of Smith. 



The Kei, so far as my observation extended, appears to follow a 

 very winding course, and, on the whole, may be considered handsome, 

 for the water, though thick and muddy-looking, is broken by little 

 rapids in many places, and the banks are alternations of high krantzes * 

 and low, reedy and grassy land, which is decked with weeping willows 

 {Salix gariepina) of considerable size and much. beauty. The average 

 width of the stream is perhaps somewhere about fifteen or twenty 

 yards, but it varies so constantly in this particular that anything like 

 a correct estimate is next to impossible. 



Immediately after our arrival we sallied forth from the wagon in 

 different directions, in search of ornithological and botanical novellies, 



B and H going up the stream, whilst S took an opposite 



course, in which I speedily followed him. Everywhere gorgeous flowers 

 were in bloom, rendering the country- gay with their briglit corollas, and 

 relieving the dark hues of the krantzes with stars of scarlet, white and 

 rose-colour. The strange but handsome Cotyledon orbiculata was 

 very plentiful, and its bright red bell-like flowers appeared in every 

 little nook or cranny of the rocks. Scarlet and rose-coloured Gladiolus, 

 loo, were growing abundantly, with a number of other kinds of orna- 

 mental herbs ; but, conspicuous above all for its splendid beauty, was 

 a little aniaryllidaceous plant, displaying blooms of pendant trumpet- 

 shaped corollas of the most intense and lustrous scarlet-crimson, 

 •which, only a icw inches above the surface of the earth, contrasted 

 strikingly with the bright green of the grass around them. This 

 superb lilllc plant I take to be that which Backhouse mentions in his 

 'Travels' as Cyrtanthus anguslifolius, tliough Paxlon,in his ' Botanical 

 Dictionary,' describes angustifolius as orange, while he gives collinus 

 and odorus as the specific designations of the only crimson kinds. 



About one o'clock we reassembled for luncheon, and compared 

 notes. We had all ibnnd the heat exceedingly great, and none of us 

 had seen anything very new; indeed there were no birds with which 

 we were not familiar at VVindvogelberg, and almost the same may be 



said of the plants. S had got a shot at a pair of hadada {Ibis 



sylvatica ?), but they were too far off' to suffer much from his charge 

 of small shot : he had followed the course of the ^ream for some 

 distance along the edge of the water, returning over the crest of a 

 high krantz, which extends, on the right bank of the river, from just 



* Rocky precipices. 



