Animal Life in South Africa. 45 



curious to remark that Pliny was acquainted with this habit 

 (generally overlooked by modern writers) and he describes 

 the "Indians" (?) as sowing their corn in the furrows thus 

 provided for them by the elephants. 



We have already alluded to the influence of locality on the 

 size of the elephant, and the same remark appears to hold good 

 with other animals. Many of the so-called varieties of antelope 

 are asserted by Dr. Livingstone in a note to his last work to 

 be but local variations of other species already known. The 

 same remark applies to the carnivora ; the varieties of lion, the 

 yellow and black, as they are styled by the colonists, thus 

 appear to be one and the same animal at different ages and 

 under the influence of different localities ; the darker colour 

 coming with age, and the thickness of the coat and the 

 shagginess of the mane being apparently in a great measure 

 dependent on the nature of the cover frequented by the animal. 



Mr. Frank Buckland, in his interesting Curiosities of 

 Natural History, Second Series, relates two curious circum- 

 stances showing the subtle occult influences of locality on 

 animals when in confinement. Animals in travelling mena- 

 geries, he informs us are, as a general rule, more healthy than 

 those confined to one spot, as in the Regent's Park collection. 

 This, too, is shown especially during gestation and parturition. 

 Again, of several pairs of lions (from different places and kept 

 always apart) which were successively placed in one particular 

 cage in the Zoological Society's Collection, the lionesses in each 

 case produced cubs with a singular malformation of the palate 

 of the mouth, the cause being, it is needless to say, inex- 

 plicable. 



We may here briefly refer to the effects instanced in the 

 case of those two formidable foes of domestic animals the 

 " fly," or tsetse, and the lung sickness or peripneumonia of 

 South Africa, both of which appear so dependent on locality. 

 The " tsetse" is a small active bee-like insect found in certain 

 regions only, which sucks, in mosquito fashion, the blood of 

 every creature it comes across. Its bite is harmless to man 

 (even to the smallest children), to the mule, ass, and goat, to 

 calves while sucking, and to all wild animals ; yet it is certain 

 death to the horse, ox, and dog; the symptoms, which last for 

 months, pointing apparently to a strong poison introduced 

 into the system. The localities in which this formidable pest 

 is found are very circumscribed. Dr. Livingstone relates that 

 although the south bank of the river Souta was a noted " fly " 

 district, he found on the north bank the plague was unknown, 

 the river being scarcely fifty yards wide, and tsetse being 

 frequently carried across on the bodies of dead game by the 

 natives. 



