310 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



perhaps more than any other that Capt. Swayne's book will be 

 found valuable. In addition we get the benefit of his advice 

 as to routes, and many a useful hint (pp. 331-360) as to equip- 

 ment, stores, and weapons, invaluable to future explorers. 



Capt. Swayne has enjoyed unusual advantages for indulging 

 his love of sport and natural history. At the outset of his 

 travels his age was five-and-twenty. He enjoyed absolute free- 

 dom of movement, and at this period had full control of a small 

 escort of Indian cavalry. The sense of responsibility and the 

 prospect of exploring new country filled him with delight and 

 awakened his faculties. When he first entered the interior of 

 Somaliland, in 1885, it was practically an untraversed country, 

 and hitherto — though, as he says, unjustly — it had always borne 

 the reputation of being the desert home of bigoted and ferocious 

 savages. His object in writing this book, he tells us, is to present 

 phases of nomadic life in North-east Africa, and to supply de- 

 tailed information that may prove useful to future travellers and 

 sportsmen in that country. In this, it seems to us, he has 

 admirably succeeded, and although in his preface he modestly 

 characterises what he has written as a mere collection of facts, 

 the careful notes which he has made of all that came within his 

 observation will be found to possess the highest interest for 

 naturalists. Most of the illustrations are reproductions of his 

 own drawings, and although they cannot be said to possess much 

 artistic merit, they convey with sufficient effect the appearance 

 and characteristic attitudes of the wild animals met with as they 

 would strike an observer viewing them for the first time. Some 

 of these sketches look a little grotesque, as, for example, the 

 figure of Clarke's Gazelle on page 312, where a buck of this 

 species is represented as trotting away with his head and neck 

 carried perpendicularly, and a remarkably long tail carried straight 

 up over the back. But this, it seems, is a peculiarity by which it 

 may be distinguished from the allied Waller's Gazelle. An 

 excellent comparison of the two, with a description of their 

 appearance and habits (which, as their long necks would indicate, 

 are very Giraffe-like), is given (pp. 311-313), with figures of the 

 heads and horns. 



For a knowledge of one of the largest and one of the smallest 

 Antelopes, namely, the Somali Hartebeest (Bubalis sivaynei), 

 11 about as large as a Donkey," and the Pik-dik {Madoqua swaynei), 



