1885.] FAUNA OF KILIMA-NJARO. 215 



Sir John Kirk, indeed, procured for me two men who had been with 

 Dr. Fischer during his recent expedition, and who had an elementary 

 knowledge of drying plants and skinning birds ; but these men. on 

 account of their superior attainments, were so exacting and difficult 

 to deal with, that when they deserted me soon after my arrival on 

 the mountains, to go slave-trading, I did not miss them keenly. 

 Nevertheless, after this the entire care of collecting fell upon me, 

 added to the already existing and by no means perfunctory cares 

 of superintending the expedition. I had not only to conduct long 

 and wearisome palavers with native chiefs in a language which I had 

 to laboriously acquire, I not only had to show the men how to 

 build houses, where to construct roads and bridges, but I must 

 also shoot and skin birds, gather and press plants, collect beetles, 

 and catch hutterflies. In a moist climate like that of Kilima-njaro 

 the labour involved in making good botanical collections alone was 

 very great, and in all this I had no help. My Zanzibar porters, 

 although excellent, hardworking, faithful fellows, evinced no aptitude 

 whatever for natural-history collecting. In spite of my repeated 

 and painstaking instructions, they would bring me flowers without 

 leaves and leaves without flowers. They preferred catching butter- 

 flies with their fingers to using a net, and thought that an insect 

 in fragments was quite as satisfactory as a whole specimen. In 

 short I found that if any work was to be of use in collecting, it 

 must proceed solely from my own efforts. I merely mention this 

 in order to explain to you the reason why I have not larger 

 collections to lay before you to-night. 



I will now briefly note the general features of the Zoology of the 

 region I have just visited, confining myself to remarks on such forms 

 as came prominently under my notice. In doing this it will be 

 perhaps more convenient to take the classes, families, and genera in 

 their generally accepted order. 



To begin with our near kinsfolk, the Monkeys, I found these 

 creatures much more abundantly present in East-Central Africa than 

 during my journeys on the west coast. Although Western Africa is 

 probably better provided with species of Quadrumana than any other 

 division of the continent, the Monkeys are much scarcer in numbers 

 and harder to see, possibly owing to the density of the forests. 



During eight months passed on the Congo I only saw Monkeys 

 twice in a wild state, and that in one place only ; and throughout 

 my entire stay of 16 months in West Africa I can only remember 

 six occasions on which I actually beheld these animals in a state of 

 nature. On the other hand, I had scarcely left the East coast to 

 journey towards Kilima-njaro, than Monkeys showed themselves 

 abundantly in the wlds. 



The first to attract my attention were the Baboons, probably the 

 species known as the Yellow Baboon. They were generally found 

 on the outskirts of native plantations, where they almost subsisted on 

 the maize and other food-stuffs stolen from the gardens of their more 

 highly developed fellow Primates. In the inhabited region of Kilima- 

 njaro, generally known as the country of Chaga, Baboons were strangely 



15* 



