CLIMATE AND NATURAL HISTORY. 993 
covers the harshest rocks and mountains. ‘Tall orchids 
spring up by the river-side, proud of their matchless 
beauty. Cannas and amomums lurk in all the damp, 
luxuriant glades. The largest trees—stern, sober and 
business-like all the rest of the year—display a fortnight’s 
blaze of blossoming in a sudden and abrupt manner, as if 
ashamed of the weakness. The very flowering of the 
grasses tries to be feebly pretty ; and, as they have no 
petals to boast of, they show their purple stamens 
apologetically. ‘he birds build. The weaver-birds hang 
their pendent nests on all the grass stalks that border the 
streams. ‘The coarse, boisterous fishing-eagles furbish up 
their dirty, untidy eyries, and carry on and quickly 
conclude a soulless courtship: the “am’rous doves” begin 
their sickly-sentimental cooing in every shady tree, and 
bright, practical couples of parrots may be seen bustling 
round the hollows in many a trunk that contains their 
intended breeding-place. ~ 
About this season the natives will bring you many 
young animals—perhaps the cubs of a_ black-backed 
jackal, or the sweet little kittens of a genet cat. In the 
still reaches of the river, on some quiet evening, you may 
see the mother hippopotamus leaving the water in a 
leisurely manner, accompanied by her fine pink baby ; 
they are intending to sleep on shore for greater security 
from the spiteful crocodiles, whose young ones, by-the- 
bye, are just emerging from the egg and running the 
gauntlet, not only of their natural enemies, the storks and 
ibises and ichneumons, but of their unnatural fathers, who 
do not approve of large families. 
So the spring advances till it is summer, and then come 
a few short weeks of delicious monotony, when the rain 
diminishes, and nature in the acme of her beauty stands 
still in a sweet content. But on content there follows 
a burst of riotous excess. The air is charged with 
electricity. The storms recommence with a fury and 
violence which never marked them heretofore. The 
thunder roars, the wind howls, and the rain descends in 
disordered floods that are no longer the gentle revivers of 
