31 
AFRICAN ANIMALS. 
BY 
P. L. SCLATER, ESQ., F.R.S., 
Secretary Zoological Society of London. 
(A Lecture delivered at the Royal Artillery Institution, Woolwich , Thursday, 29th Oct., 1896J . 
Colonel E. D. E. Lockhart, Colonsl-on-the-Stafe, in the Chair. 
This Lecture was given to a very full audieuce of ladies and gentlemen 
and was illustrated by a fine map of Africa, kindly lent for the occasion 
by the Royal Geographical Society and by a series of tables and 
pictures, prepared by the lecturer, which clearly showed the various 
classes of animals as well as different specimens of those classes; on the 
tables in the centre of the lecture theatre a large collection of heads 
and horns, the property of the R.A. Institution, helped materially in 
the work of illustration. 
The lecture was thoroughly appreciated by all who heard it; the 
following is a precis of the remarks of the talented lecturer. 
Referring to the testimony of the old writers that Africa is a “ land 
of wonders,” the lecturer stated that he hoped to show that, as regards 
its larger mammals, this is truly the case, for no other part of the 
world produces such a number and such a variety of them as certain 
districts of what zoologists called “ the Ethiopian region.” The 
general physical characters of Africa, south of the Sahara, were then 
shortly described and its principal rivers, lakes, mountains and deserts 
pointed out. In Africa proper, three zoological subregions might be 
recognized : (1) The Saharan subregion characterized by its gazelles 
and other forms of desert-hunting antelopes; (2) the West African 
subregion, consisting entirely of dense forest tenanted by anthropoid 
apes and a few forest-loving antelopes, and (3) the great Gape 
subregion, which extended from the Cape Colony far northwards and 
embraced a broad tract of country all up the eastern coast to 
Somaliland. The last subregion was that in which the larger 
mammals, or what were now commonly called c< big game,” were so 
abundant and, indeed, much more abundant than anywhere else in the 
world. After pointing out the 14 orders of mammals, into which this 
class of the vertebrata is usually divided by naturalists, Mr. Sclater 
selected six of them as containing sets of specially typical African 
mammals. Among the quadrumana the gorilla and chimpanzee, two 
1. VOL. XXIV. 
