SEPT.] CONTINENT OF AFRICA. 
felt by the touch. If you try to scrape it off with 
a knife, the knife slides over it. One fixed on my 
wrist ; no means which I used to take it away 
succeeded. One of our people poured the juice of 
tobacco upon it, which made it raise itself a little 
above the skin, when he seized it and tore it away. 
When it has sucked itself full of blood then it falls off 
of its own accord. The poor cattle are sometimes 
covered with them, which when the crow perceives, 
he comes and stands upon the cow's back till he has 
picked as many as satisfies his hunger. The cow 
is so pleased with bis employment that she gives him 
no molestation till he has finished his repast. 
A tree at a little distance from our waggons had two 
remarkable nests on it. The one was about four 
yards in circumference, and the other three, and about 
a yard in depth. They are built of coarse grass, by a 
small bird which resembles our goldfinch. One of 
these nests had seventeen holes in the bottom by which 
the bird enters, the other had seven. At one time 
I saw about a hundred birds come out of them. 
Instead of being the nest of a single pair of birds, 
they seem to be kraals, or towns of birds. Perhaps 
one may be the property of a single pair in which they 
accomn:iodate all their descendants. A horned owl 
had taken possession of the outside of the roof of the 
largest for a nest : she u as sitting on it, and it appeared 
from the bones and hair strewed under that she lived 
upon the field mouse. I had the curiosity to climb 
