Aug. 1833. 



FOSSIL QUADRUPEDS. 



99 



from India^ and the Indian islands^ where troops of 

 elephants^ noble forests, and impenetrable jungles, are 

 associated together in every account. If, on the other hand, 

 we refer to any work of travels through the southern parts 

 of Africa, we shall find allusions in almost every page either 

 to the desert character of the country, or to the numbers 

 of large animals inhabiting it. The same thing is rendered 

 evident by the many sketches which have been published of 

 various parts of the interior. When the Beagle was at Cape 

 Town, I rode a few leagues into the country, which at least 

 was sufficient to render that which I had read more fully 

 intelligible. 



Dr. Andrew Smith, who, at the head of his adventurous 

 party, has so lately succeeded in passing the Tropic of 

 Capricorn, informs me that, taking into consideration the 

 whole of the southern part of Africa, there can be no doubt of 

 its being sterile country. On the southern and south-eastern 

 coasts there are some fine forests, but with these exceptions, 

 the traveller may pass, for days together, through open 

 plains, covered by a poor and scanty vegetation. It is dif- 

 ficult to convey any accurate idea of degrees of comparative 

 fertility; but it may be safely said, that the amount of 

 vegetation supported at any one time* by Great Britain, 

 exceeds, perhaps even tenfold, the quantity on an equal 

 area, in the interior parts of Southern Africa. The fact that 

 bullock- waggons can travel in any direction, excepting near 

 the coast, without more than occasionally half an hour^s 

 delay, gives, perhaps, a more definite notion of its scanti- 

 ness. Now if Ave look to the animals inhabiting these wide 

 plains, we shall find their numbers extraordinarily great, 

 and their bulk immense. We must enumerate the elephant, 

 three species of rhinoceros, and as Dr. Smith is convinced 

 two others also, the hippopotamus, giraffe, the bos cafFer — as 

 large as a full-grown bull, and the elan — but little less, two 



* I mean by this to exclude the total amount, which may have been 

 successively produced and consumed during a given period. 



