120 ARMADILLOS AND AAED-VAEKS. 



incessant pursuit of these animals by the natives for the 

 sake of their hides and flesh, and also by their being dug- 

 out by Europeans for so-called sjjort. Their flesh is said 

 to be excellent, and is compared to superior pork ; while 

 the value of each hide is aliout fifteen shillings. This 

 threatened extermination is a very short-sighted policy on 

 the 2>art of the South African farmers, to whom the aard- 

 vark is a valuable ally, not only on account of the 

 enormous number of termites it consumes, but likewise 

 from the circumstance that while it is engaged in digging 

 for these insect-pests it covers with loose earth a quantity 

 of the seeds of grass and other pastoral herbage which 

 would otherwise perish during the hot season. Although 

 there is no likelihood at present of the Ethiopian aard- 

 vark sharing the threatened fate of its southern cousin, 

 yet the extermination of the latter would be a sad loss to 

 zoological science, and we therefore wish every success to 

 a movement which we hoar has been set going by the 

 Gape Farmers' Association for the protection of this most 

 strange and curious creature ere it be too late. 



Addendum. — Quite recently some remains havg been 

 discovered in the upper Eocene, or Oligocene strata of 

 France, which are considered to indicate the existence at 

 tliat period of small ancestral tyjjes of aard-varks. 



