ALLEN: MAMMALS FROM THE BLUE NILE VALLEY. 307 
of the wet season, afford a passage. As settlements increase along the 
rivers, the native villages are planted at such spots, termed ‘ mesharats,’ 
r “places where one can get down to the water.’ Since the large 
mammals are also dependent on these for reaching the water, the 
settlements result in driving them farther and farther away where 
there are ‘mesharats’ at a distance from habitations, with their 
accompaniment of droves of cattle, yelping dogs, and native hunters. 
The luxuriant growth of tall grass that springs up after the summer 
rains becomes exceedingly dry by late autumn, and the natives set fire 
to it and burn the country for many hundreds of square miles. The 
soil itself becomes transformed from a mass of sticky mud in the wet 
season to a hard baked or a powdery condition, often much cracked 
and very difficult for walking. Such unfavorable conditions appear to 
have had a direct influence in reducing the ground-living species to a 
minimum, so that it was very hard to obtain small mammals, and even 
in comparatively sheltered places the number of species was disap- 
pomtingly few. According to local report, there is much more large 
game along the Blue Nile during the wet season and just previous to it, 
in April and May, when the drying up of the smaller and remoter 
pools forces the animals to seek the main stream. The rank growth of 
» ie during the summer rains also causes a more general dis- 
persal. 
There has been but little collecting done in the area covered, though 
Lait have from time to time sent specimens to Europe. As long 
ago as 1842, Sundevall published descriptions of mammals obtained in 
Sennar by the Swedish traveler Hedenborg, but as then used, Sennar 
was a somewhat indefinite term applied to the country between the 
White and the Blue Niles. Riippell and Heuglin later did much 
‘xploration in northeastern Africa, including journeys into the Sudan. 
(Chey gave names to many of the species whose range includes the Blue 
N ile country. What has since been done in the study of the mamma- 
jan fauna of the region has been of fragmentary nature, and consists 
hiefly of reports on occasional specimens sent by Europeans to the 
= of England and Germany. In 1898, Lord Lovat’s expedi- 
on crossed from southern Abyssinia to the Blue Nile Valley, and 
btained a few specimens from the latter region, including a new 
iultimammate mouse, described by de Winton (1900). Captain 
| Flower, of the Gizeh Zodlogical Gardens has several times been 
| | the region to obtain living animals for the splendid collection under 
scharge. Mr. A. L. Butler, head of the Game Preservation Depart- 
‘ent of the Sudan, also knows the country well and has sent many 
‘ecimens of birds and mammals to the British Museum. 
