PART THE FOURTH. 
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CHAPTER I. 
General Descriptions of African Zoology—New Species of Animals, 
together with various Specimens of Natural History, collected 
in Southern Africa. 
To form a just estimate of the peculiar characters 
which distinguish the natural productions of any 
particular country, it is necessary to take into ac- 
count the leading features of its physical geography, 
to attend to the magnitude and direction of its prin- 
cipal rivers and mountain chains, and to study the 
effects which these circumstances necessarily pro- 
duce upon the general temperature and climatology 
due to the latitude of the place. In the case of 
Africa this is perhaps more necessary than in that of 
any other continent; for though placed for the most 
part within the tropics, and therefore inheriting, as 
it were, from nature an almost perfect uniformity of 
climate throughout its whole extent, the alternations 
of mountain and plain, of open karroo and forest, of 
rich arable and barren desert, are so common and 
so extensive, that the productions of all other quar- 
ters of the world may be said to find a congenial 
climate in some part of Africa. The whole north- 
eastern portion of the continent, as is well known, 
