260 
ON SAFARI 
the following, which I extract from Flower and Lydekker’s 
Mammals: Living and Extinct (p. 208)— 
“ Family Orycteropodid^e 
“ External surface scantily covered with bristle-like 
hairs. Teeth numerous, apparently heterodont, diphyo- 
dont, and of peculiar and complex structure, being 
traversed by a number of parallel vertical pulp-canals. 
Lumber vertebrae with no accessory zygapophyses. 
Femur with a third trochanter. Fore-feet without 
pollex but all the other digits well developed . . . 
suited to digging, the plantar surfaces resting on the 
ground in walking. Hind-feet with five subequal toes. 
Mouth elongated and tubular. Tongue sub vermiform. 
Uterus bicornuate. Placenta broadly zonular. Feeding 
on animal substances. Terrestrial and fossorial in habits. 
Now mainly limited to the Ethiopian region.” 
Such descriptions evidence the depth and thorough¬ 
ness of scientific research, but hardly help one to form any 
rational conception of what the actual animal resembles 
in life. 
Since writing the above, I have at length met with 
the aard-vaark—in a glass case in Bergen Museum ! 
Upon viewing his personal appearance (as here roughly 
sketched) regrets at having missed seeing him in Africa 
diminished. One almost felt grateful at meeting thus, 
on neutral ground. 
Another creature which, although common, is 
absolutely and always unseen, is the aard-wolf— 
earth-wolf, in Boer nomenclature. This again is 
strictly nocturnal and subterranean in habit. By 
description of systematists, he is of the Hyaenas; yet 
with the remarkable exception that his teeth are feeble 
and even rudimentary. Strange are Nature’s facts 
when a hyaena with “ rudimentary ” teeth has to be 
conceived, since one never sees the beast in person. 
This is a handsome animal, as his portrait at p. 113 shows. 
