THE FORESTS OF KORDOFAN 
111 
This morning 1 , after the daybreak episode with eagles, 
we pursued our ramble along the riverside, and never 
a mile but emphasised the fact that here we had entered 
—in geo-zoologic sense — upon a New World, that 
of Ethiopia . 1 The bird-life of the “ Desert - Stretch ” 
(Chapter hi.) had been largely of European type. Here 
in Kordofan we were face to face with the bewilderments 
of a Tropic Zone. 
Geographic distribution in the nature of things can 
have no cast-iron limits. Birds, of many genera, for 
example, are cosmopolitans—there are “globe-spanners” 
which traverse our planet twice 
a year—several recognise no 
set bounds whatever. Hence 
these arbitrary faunal areas 
are merely designed as arti¬ 
ficial aids to study—crutches 
whereby science can lamely 
limp along the devious path¬ 
way toward knowledge. Still, 
the system is approximately 
correct, though never rigidly 
so. Thus already in the 
“Desert-Stretch” we had detected the northernmost 
outposts — the scouts — of Ethiopia ; here, in like 
degree, we still recognise a few Europeans. Below, 
say the twelfth degree of North latitude, the tropical 
type predominates; in the tenth, the revolution is com¬ 
plete, conspicuous to all who have eyes to see. 
Thus to-day one’s eye in constant sequence kept 
picking up creatures that in Europe would be as incon¬ 
ceivable as pterodactyls or flying icthyosauri—giant figures 
such as the saddle-billed jabiru, clad in “thunder and 
1 Europe, combined with North Africa down to Sahara, constitutes a 
single integral zoological area, defined in science as the “ Palsearctic 
Region.” Southwards from Sahara, all Africa is included in the region 
distinguished as “ Ethiopian.” 
Darters. 
