CHAPTER VIII 



BIRDS — INSECTS — REPTILES 



1 THINK perhaps the best method of offering some 

 description of the teeming Avi-fauna of this part 

 of Africa will be to arrange it, so far as possible, into 

 three divisions, and study in turn the bird life of 

 the hiUs, the rivers, and the plain, for each of these 

 localities possesses its own families, and each forms 

 an interesting background in which to consider 

 them. 



As we have seen, the mountainous regions, or 

 to be more precise, the elevated tablelands and 

 plateaux, are in many respects not unlike those of 

 Europe : rolling uplands covered with short grass, 

 bracken, gorse, and clover ; but few trees, and these 

 of more or less stunted growth. Here we find 

 birds of sombre plumage, their feathers displaying 

 few of the exuberant colours so characteristic of 

 those of the lower altitudes. It is as though at 

 the commencement of the great Scheme of Things 

 care had been taken that where, in the harmonious 

 arrangement of the whole, brilliant-hued members 

 of one branch of the creation were non-existent or 

 few, no brightly coloured stragglers from other 

 branches were permitted to intrude, and thus 



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