AFRICA. St 
quired confiderable reputation from the fize 
bf their tails; but this has been greatly ex- 
aggerated: their ordinary weight is not above 
four or five pounds. During my refidence 
at the Cape Town, one of thefe animals was 
carried from houfe to houfe as a wonder ; 
and yet its tail, though much admired, did 
not weigh more than nine pounds and a half. 
It is abfolutely nothing elfe but a lump of 
fat, which has this peculiarity, that when 
melted it never acquires the confiftency of 
that found in other parts of the animal ; it is 
a kind of congealed oil, which the Hottentots 
prefer to any other for their undlions, and for 
applying that powder which they call hu' 
ghou. The planters employ it alfo in fry- 
ing certain kinds of meat. When mixed 
with other greafy fabftances, it becomes 
hard like butter, and is fubftituted for it, 
efpecially in fuch cantons of the colony as 
are too dry for breeding cows. On this ac- 
count it is called, in the fertile parts of the 
country, in pleafantry and by way of deri- 
fion, the butter of fuch or fuch a place: 
at the Cape, for example, it is called the 
butter oi Swart-/a?jd, a dry canton in which 
milk is exceedingly Icarce. 
Vol. II. G The 
