ZOOLOGY 
291 
or East Africa. I should like to make a special mention of the large Octodont 
—one of the few Octodont rodents found outside America—the “ ground-pig,” 
Aulacodns swinderenianus. This creature which is especially fond of sugar¬ 
cane plantations is such a delicious article of diet that it ought to be domesti¬ 
cated for the table. Its flesh tastes something like that of a rabbit but has a 
savour quite its own. 
As regards rats, I should mention that they are numerous and a great pest. 
The natives eat them with gusto. The common rat of the native villages and 
European settlements is a brown variety of the Black rat {Mus rattus). There 
is one rat which is an appalling creature to look at. It is apparently allied 
to the Bandicoot-rat of India—about the size of a rabbit, with pale grey fur, 
a long tail and hideously long snout. In captivity it is ferocious to the last 
degree and looks a thoroughly evil animal. 
A porcupine has been found in British Central Africa but I have not been 
able to obtain specimens for identification and only know it from native report 
and from having seen its quills in use for native ornaments. The natives state 
that there are two species, one large and one small, for which they have slightly 
different names, Nungu and Kanungu. 
The Hyraxes are represented by at least two species— Procavia johnstoni 
and P. brucei. They are chiefly confined in their distribution to the high 
mountains and plateaux. 
The Ungulates, as elsewhere in Tropical Africa, are well represented. 
There is the African elephant of course, and among the Perissodactyla 
we have the ordinary two-horned rhinoceros and the zebra. The Artiodactyla 
are represented by the hippopotamus, two genera of swine, and numerous 
examples of the Bovidce or hollow-horned ruminants. 
The elephant was formerly most abundant throughout the whole of British 
Central Africa, and in the years following on Livingstone’s first expedition 
many sportsmen from England made large sums of money by the ivory which 
they obtained in the Shire district and at the north end of Lake Nyasa. Sub¬ 
sequently this great beast has become very scarce within the limits of the 
Protectorate though he is still found in large numbers in the rest of British 
Central Africa, especially in the Mweru districts, the Luangwa Valley and the 
country between the Luangwa and the Luapula. They are also occasionally 
met with in the Ruo, Zomba, West Shire, South Nyasa, Central Angoniland, 
Marimba, and West Nyasa districts of the Protectorate, being most abundant 
in Central Angoniland and in Marimba. They feed chiefly on leaves and such 
fruits as are in season. They also eat the top shoots of the Phragmites reeds 
and the roots of certain trees, which they are fond of chewing. These trees they 
uproot with their trunks and also by butting. Mr. Sharpe, who has studied 
elephants closely, denies that they use their tusks for prizing-up the trees or for 
exhuming roots. Although I respect him as a great authority on the subject I 
cannot agree with him in this particular. I have seen something of elephants 
on the Congo and at the back of the Cameroons, and there the natives have 
told me spontaneously that the elephant used one of his tusks for digging in 
the ground and for uprooting the small trees. Moreover, it often happens that 
one of the elephant’s tusks—the “ground tusk”—is more worn and blunted 
than the other, probably from being put to this use. 1 At the same time 
1 The term “ground tusk ” may bear two interpretations. According to old custom, when a native in 
Central Africa kills an elephant he gives the “ground tusk” to the Chief of the Country. This may 
either mean the inferior tusk worn with digging, but more probably the undermost of the two tusks—that 
which is touching the ground, in reference to the proprietary rights of the “ Lord of the Manor.” 
