Mammalia of the Fish River Bush, South Africa. 195 



tainous countries of the north of Europe, in which decided 

 marks of glacial action may not be observed, but I think I 

 have mentioned above some of the most remarkable cases. 

 Yours very truly, 



W. C. Tkevblyan. 



To Professor Jameson. 



On the Mammalia of the Fish River Bush, South Africa, 

 with notices of their Habits. By Mr William Black, 

 Staff Assistant-Surgeon. Communicated by the Author. 



(Continued from p. 83.) 



The Elephant and Rhinoceros have years ago left the re- 

 treats of the Fish River Bush. The present Colonel Arm- 

 strong recollects, when as a subaltern stationed atFort Brown, 

 of passing through a herd of elephants on the Koonap Hill ; 

 and it was the common practice for the men of the detach- 

 ment there in his time to hunt them on the Committee's Flats 

 in the valley of the Ecca. A solitary sea-cow, or Hippopo- 

 tamus, here and there, still lingers in the Fish River, below 

 Trumpeter's Drift, and there still remain several of them 

 in the Keiskamma. 



The Buffalo still haunts, though in few numbers, the bushy 

 kloofs and sides of the hills between the Grass-Kop and Com- 

 mittee's and Double Drift, and one or two have been killed 

 in that neighbourhood, since the last war, by some boers living 

 between the two posts. They are hunted with dogs, which 

 bring them to bay, so as to afford a good shot behind the 

 shoulder, or about the ear. The forehead is impenetrable, 

 the brain being there protected by an enormous thickness of 

 bone, forming the standing for the horns. They are exces- 

 sively savage when wounded, and sometimes they evince a 

 cunning which will prompt them to feign death, so as to de- 

 lude the unwary to venture too near, when the infuriated brute 

 summons up his strength, and rushes on his adversary to his 

 almost certain destruction. 



The fawn-coloured Koodoo {Antelope Strep siceros), with 

 its spiral-twisted horns, — absent in the female, — one of the 

 handsomest of the large bucks, may be observed in small herds 



N2 



