TRAVELS IN BARBARA. 
the breed. The cows are bad ; the ass and mule 
are chiefly employed in labour. The noxious tribe 
of serpents abound in an extraordinary degree. 
The boa constrictor, that enormous species, before 
the view of which armies are reported to have fled, 
makes its appearance on the borders of the Sahara. 
The chief annoyance of the inhabitants is from 
scorpions, which swarm to such a degree as to fill 
even the houses. Their bite, however, though poi- 
sonous, is not mortal ; not at least in those which 
occur in the cultivated tracts on the sea coast. The 
most terrible scourge which the animal creation pre- 
sents are the locusts. They are common, indeed, 
to all Africa; but the desert seems here to pour 
them forth in extraordinary multitudes. They 
move in vast bodies, like armies ; and every at- 
tempt hitherto made to stop or to divert their pro- 
gress, has proved completely abortive. 
Shaw was peculiarly struck by the total down- 
fall of those sciences, of which Barbary, at no dis- 
tant period, had been the favourite seat ; particu- 
larly the various branches of mathematics and che- 
mistry. The author saw quadrants, astrolabes, and 
other mathematical instruments, constructed with 
very considerable ingenuity ) but they were mere- 
ly kept as antique curiosities ; neither the mode of 
their construction, nor their actual use, being at all 
understood. Of arithmetic, which has been said 
to be invented by the Arabs, not one in twenty 
