The Zoologist— November, 1868. 1425 



NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



' Tlie Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia? By Sir Samuel W. Baker, 

 M.A., F.R.G.S. London : Macmillan, 1868. 596 pp. letter- 

 press and numerous illustrations. 



Were it my duty to express any opinion as to the originality of 

 the discoveries of Bruce, Speke, Grant and Baker, I should be inclined 

 to refer to those ancient maps of Africa lately republished in ' Good 

 Words,' and to compare Lakes Zembre and Zaflan with Albert Nyanza 

 and Victoria Nyanza; and I should like also to inquire how it happens 

 that trading-stations, certainly existing in 1450, should have been 

 entirely forgotten in 1850. I find it impossible to conquer a belief 

 that the Magungo of Sir Samuel Baker was a trading-station familiarly 

 known to the Portuguese, centuries previously, and that, under the 

 influence of an Ethiopian atmosphere and surroundings, the black 

 races of man have been gradually making head against the white 

 races, who at an earlier period were certainly the aggressors. We 

 have learned from the writings of Mr. Bates that when man rests from 

 his aggressive policy, even for a few months, Nature and Nature's 

 forestry reconquer the ground they had lost ; and thus it has been in 

 Africa: the white man has halted in his onward course, and Nature, 

 in the person of the black man, has reclaimed and regained her own. 

 But, difficult though it be to perceive the originality of their recent 

 discoveries, it is still more difficult to attach any scientific value to 

 the zoological labour of these enthusiastic travellers; indeed, when we 

 seek for precise information, we really seem further removed from it 

 than before we had read a line of the description or glanced at one 

 of the illustrations. Thus, what is the " seroot fly," described and 

 figured at p. 185? And what are the "bayard" and the "coor," 

 described and figured at p. 225 ? A little, a very little, knowledge of 

 the scientific or technical department of Natural History would have 

 enabled Sir Samuel to convey to us some idea of these novelties, 

 indeed I may say some knowledge of the Zoology of a region almost 

 entirely unexplored by the scientific naturalist. Our intrepid traveller 

 is familiar enough with the lion and the leopard, the elephant and the 

 rhinoceros, the giraffe and the hippo, the baboon and the crocodile, 

 the gazelle and the ostrich ; and when he tells us of his encounters 



SECOND SERIES — VOL. III. 3 F 



