110 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
about, fine brown birds, very like the English so-called common 
buzzard. Doubtless in time all the fine hawks, which one 
sees daily, and the eagles, which may be seen weekly, will 
become as rare here as in England with the advance of civi- 
lisation. On a carcase of one of these desert buzzards were 
numbers of very common beetles called Dermestes vulpinus. 
Dorsally these are not unlike the English Dermestes, but when 
I bent over the body, hey presto, with one accord they all 
rolled over on their backs, with legs drawn up, and then, to all 
intents and purposes, they were ‘ bird-droppings,’ the lower 
surface being blotched with white. 
January 15, 1915. — Toiled in the heat of the day 2 till 5 p.m. 
and caught nothing. I mention this so that you shall not run 
away with the impression that Africa is teeming with insect 
life at all seasons. This is toward the close of a six months’ 
dry season, and as the rains failed to a great extent last year 
everything is burned up. At 5.80 I went out again and found 
a human skull and a sweet little nest suspended in some low 
scrub. A freshly-killed newly-born black-necked cobra was 
sent in to the Museum to-day. I found one on the 11th inst., 
about the same length ; it was lying dead in the road, having 
been killed. 
February 20, 1915. — Cycled out to Kabete and spent the 
week-end at the C.M.S. Mission. The children of the missionary 
had a number of animals in captivity, amongst these being 
a colobus monkey which had only been caught six weeks 
before, and yet would feed from the hand. Young colobuses 
have a little thumb which disappears with advancing years, 
till in hoary old sinners like this specimen there is scarcely 
any trace of such a thing. With their long black-and-white 
fur, one would think them the most conspicuous of creatures, 
but I notice Gregory in his ‘ Great Rift Valley ’ says that 
this is far from being the case as in the Kenia forests they 
appear like one of the great tufts of lichen ( Usnea ) with which 
most of the trees are draped. 
A specimen of the East African Genet ( Gennetta bettoni) 
was another interesting captive that had been caught in the 
garden in a simple but ingenious trap made of a Tate’s sugar- 
box. In this they had also caught a black-backed jackal 
