The Zoologist — January, 1873. 3343 



November, 1770, by James Bruce, a Scottish gentleman of inde- 

 pendent property and a lineal descendant of the lyings of Scotland : " 

 and it added, by way of parenthesis, " In Egypt it never rains." I 

 believed both. I was jealous of Mungo Park. I thought his was an 

 undue interference with my Scottish hero; but as time wore on I read 

 of other discoveries of these Nile sources by the Portuguese and by 

 Jesuits in their zeal for propagandisra; and I read of Nile discoveries 

 thousands of years before the Portuguese were a nation or the Jesuits 

 a Society, and I have lived to an era when the " final settlement" of 

 Bruce is forgotten and when discoveries of the source of the Nile 

 are common. Familiarity begets contempt, and we now read in the 

 columns of the 'Times' the announcement of these discoveries 

 with just as much interest as the birth of a hippopotamus in the 

 Zoological Gardens. In fact, Africa has become a "curiosity," 

 and now that an Englishman has settled himself comfortably in the 

 interior, and an American has shown how easy it is to visit him, we 

 may reasonably expect that Mr. Cook will annually lead a company 

 of fashionable ennuies to "knock and ring" at the door of the 

 voluntary exile, and that a " Month at Ujiji" will become as familiar 

 an expression as a " Summer in Norway" or a " Winter in Rome." 

 The only questions for solution and the only matters for wonder- 

 ment will be, " How did Livingstone conceal himself for so long a 

 period ? Why did he not communicate with his friends } Why 

 have VA'e Englishmen who professed so warm an interest in his 

 safety been allowed to receive no intelligence of his where- 

 abouts ? " 



The Birds of Africa — could they appreciate their advantages — 

 ought to consider themselves particularly fortunate in the number 

 and ability of their historians. Andersson, Burchell, Chapman, 

 Des Murs, Finsch, Gurney, Hartlaub, Layard, Levaillant, Miiller, 

 Riippell, Sharpe, Shelley, Andrew Smith, A. C. Smith, Swainson, 

 Tristram, Van Heuglin, Waterhouse, and many others, have each 

 contributed a chapter to the general stock of African bird-lore, not 

 only to their own honour but to the great advantage of Science. 

 Although I do not contemplate going through this long list 

 alphabetically, I will begin with the first. 



Charles John Andersson, a Swede by birth, was educated at the 

 public high school in Wenersborg, and was afterwards a student in 

 the University of Lund for a single term : he does not seem to have 

 studied deeply or to have attained any proficiency in literature ; his 



