CURIOUS FACTS 24^ 



stand, no trace has as yet been found. The 

 Tsesseby {Damaliscus iunatus), existing a hundred 

 miles to the southward, and again, I beheve, in 

 certain districts of the Nyasaland Protectorate, is, 

 so far as I am aware, wholly absent from the basin 

 of the Zambezi. Added to these the Giraffe, 

 Situtunga, the Lechwe and Puku among the 

 Cobus family, certain monkeys, and a multitude of 

 birds, headed by the Ostrich, are here entirely non- 

 existent in conditions in which their absence is, to 

 my mind, wholly inexplicable. Yet, curious as it 

 may appear, all the animals enumerated are found 

 to the north or south, and some to both. Expla- 

 nations of these surprising facts are perforce 

 speculative to a degree. Naturalists, in order to 

 account for the distribution of the world's fauna, 

 are wiUing, with a most engaging irresponsibility, 

 to reconstruct the great Scheme of Things, and 

 turn land into water and continent into sea. Forms 

 and species change, doubtless, and even where no 

 particular degree of outward and visible alteration 

 may have proclaimed itself, conditions and neces- 

 sities of hfe may have proved unattractive or 

 insufficient, necessitating wholesale migrations ; 

 but putting aside the many unacceptable theories 

 which have been propounded to account for the 

 localisation of the game families, I consider it may 

 be explained, at least in the cases of some of the 

 species mentioned, by prolonged periods of drought, 

 or of long-extended conditions unfavourable to the 

 growth or development of some favourite article 

 of diet, and this may have caused them to wander 

 off in search of it to distant portions of the country, 



