i$2 APPENDIX. 



of all comes the eaft, which produces flowers and fruit 

 till the beginning of the rainy feafon. In the end of April 

 new leaves pufli off the old ones without leaving the tree 

 at any time bare, fo that every tree in Abyflinia appears to 

 be an evergreen. The laft I faw in flower was the coffee- 

 tree at Emfras the 20th of April 1770: from this time till 

 the rains begin, and all the feafon of them, the trees get 

 fully into leaf, and the harveft, which is generally in thefe 

 months throughout Abyflinia, fupplies the deficiency of 

 the feed upon buflies and trees. All the leaves of the trees 

 in Abyflinia are very highly varnifhed, and of a tough lea- 

 ther like texture, which enables them to fupport the con- 

 flant and violent rains under which they are produced. 



This provifion made for granivorous birds, in itfelf fo 

 ample, is doubled by another extraordinary regulation. 

 The country being divided by a ridge of mountains, a line 

 drawn along the top of thefe divides the feafons likewife ; 

 fo that thofe birds to whom any one food is neceflary be- 

 come birds of paflage, and,by a fhort migration,find the fame 

 feafons, and the fame food, on the one fide, which the rains 

 and change of weather had deprived them of on the other. 



There is no great plenty of water-fowl in Abyflinia, 

 efpecially of the web - footed kind. I never remember 

 to have feen one of thefe that are not common in moil 

 parts of Europe. Vail variety of florks cover the plains 

 in May, when the rains become conftant. The large in- 

 digenous birds that refide conflantly on the high mountains 

 of 6amen and Taranta, have mofl of them an extraordinary 

 provifion made againfl the wet and the weather ; each fea- 

 ther is a tube, from the pores of which iflue a very fine dufl: 



3 or 



