Feb. 13, 1858.] 
LIVINGSTONE FESTIVAL. 
137 
could shower upon him, he is still the same honest, true-hearted 
David Livingstone as when he issued from the wilds of Africa. 
( Load and protracted cheering.') 
Professor Owen. — I rise to express the pleasure with which I 
avail myself of. the opportunity I am favoured with of publicly 
acknowledging the deep sense of the obligation which, in common 
with all men of science, and more especially the cultivators of 
natural history, I feel towards the distinguished traveller we have 
this day assembled to honour. ( Cheers .) 
During the long and painful journeyings by which the great geo- 
graphical discoveries were made that place the name of Livingstone 
among the foremost in that science — though harassed by every 
difficulty, enfeebled by sickness and encompassed by dangers — in 
perils of swamps and waters, in perils of noxious and destructive 
beasts, or of crafty and hostile men — yet no phenomenon of nature, 
whether meteoric or living, appears to have escaped the clear 
glance and self-possessed cognition of the determined explorer. 
( Loud cheers.) 
In regard to zoology, I must state that I never perused the work 
of any traveller from which I had to take, from the same number of 
pages, so many extracts of new and original notices of the living 
habits of rare animals, as from the volume of African travels of 
which Mr. Murray now announces the “ Thirtieth Thousand.” 
In this work the South African colonist and the entomologist are 
alike benefited by the most precise and authentic evidence yet 
obtained of the terrible tsetse-fly, and its fatal effects on the ox, 
horse, dog, and other animals indispensable to colonising progress. 
The scientific staff about to accompany Livingstone in his second 
exploration of the Zambesi will doubtless, aided by his experience, 
clear up all the mystery of this most extraordinary property attri- 
buted to an insect no bigger than the house-fly. In the same un- 
pretending volume we find a rich store of new facts in natural 
history, told with the charm of direct transcript from nature, and 
with the raciness of original power, and that humour which is so 
often the concomitant of great and simple minds. In regard to the 
singular economy of the ants and termites, with what interest we 
read of the unhooking of the wings by the insect itself after the 
nuptial flight, when the bride, her one holiday- excursion ended, 
lays down her “ limber fans ” of glistening gauze, and betakes 
herself henceforth to the duties of domestic life, — of the untiring 
activity of the workers, under the scorching sun, which unwearied- 
