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THE VICTORIA NYANZA 
35 
observer has seen evidence of ferocity in the marsh- 
buck. I have often watched one of these animals in -the 
Zoological Gardens and never remember to have 
seen an animal in confinement which appeared so 
unhappy. This marsh-buck used to be fairly common 
in the sw^amps around Uganda and on some of the 
uninhabited islands of the Sesse Archipelago. 
Selous^ when hunting these marsh-buck on the Chobe 
river, a tributary of the Zambesi river, described the 
search for these retiring animals among such immense 
beds of reeds and papyrus as tantamount to looking for 
needles in a haystack. The natives obtain them in 
the following way. When the animal is approached 
it immerses the whole body, leaving only the nose and 
tips of the horns above water, trusting to be unobserved, 
but the natives paddle quite close and spear it. 
The unusual development of the hoofs of Speke’s 
antelope induce me to mention a similar condition of the 
toes found in a curious bird living on the lake and often 
called the lily-trotter, from the dainty way in which it 
walks over the broad leaves of aquatic plants searching 
for insects. 
This bird is known to ornithologists as the Jacana, 
and it belongs to the same order as plovers, curlews, 
and snipe. The lily-trotter has a body like the moor¬ 
hen and legs like a coot, but the toes and claws are 
enormously lengthened, and the bird spreads them out 
spider-like as it walks over the water-plants. The 
spread of the Jacana’s toes has a diameter of five 
inches. All members of the family (Parridae) to which 
the Jacana belongs frequent lakes and swamps whether 
inland or near the coast. When danger threatens they 
crouch or partially submerge themselves. cdUt 
The Miid-Jish .—^This inhabitant of the lake is/known 
to the zoologist as the L-opidcd -ren— 
fish. The natives of Uganda call 
it mamba, and appreciate it as an article of diet. 
This fish has a long cylindrical body like an eel, and 
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