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THE SMALLER FAUNA OF MOUNT ELGON 
inhabitants is always a species which is well known to be very 
distasteful and is invariably a dominant species found in 
immense numbers. I do not wish to be understood as putting 
forward these considerations in any dogmatic spirit, but I must 
own that the evidence which has been accumulated for many 
years in favour of these theories seems to be conclusive. 
ON THE SMALLER FAUNA OF MOUNT ELGON 
By R. Kemp. 
Having recently spent five months on Mount Elgon and in 
its vicinity, a few notes on my experience there and remarks 
on the smaller animals and birds which were met with may 
perhaps be of some interest to those who read these pages. 
It was on the 20th August 1909 that I left Kisumu, north- 
ward bound, and on the 21st January 1910 I reached the 
railway again at Kibigori, having collected during that time 
four hundred and sixty nine small mammals and two hundred 
and fifty small birds, for Mr. C. D. Rudd of South Africa. 
Of the birds which I obtained and noted I do not propose 
to write much, partly because birds have already been so 
thoroughly studied and collected that little new can be expected, 
and partly because the specimens have not yet been worked out, 
so that a detailed examination of them yet remains to be gone 
through. 
However, I was pleased to find fan-t ailed grass -warblers 
(Cisticola) and their near relations much in evidence, from the 
grass plains at ihe foot of the escarpment right up to the great 
cave at about 10,000 feet on the south face of the mountain. 
Engabuni or the Elgon escarpment, where there are such 
a great number of caves, is distant from the Kirui’s villages 
only some five or six miles, and yet the bird lists of these two 
places is almost entirely different. Apart from the forms which 
sleep on the escarpment, but which feed on the plains below, 
such as most of the pigeons and doves, the hawks, the pied 
raven and a few others, my records show only one species 
which really lives in both places, and that is the Bulbul with a 
