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Show 1885.] FAUNA OF KILIMA-NJARO. 215 Sir John Kirk, indeed, procured for me two men who had been with Dr. Fischer during his recent expedition, and who had an elementary knowledge of drying plants and skinning birds ; but these men, on account of their superior attainments, were so exacting and difficult to deal with, that when they deserted me soon after m y arrival on the mountains, to go slave-trading, I did not miss them keenly. Nevertheless, after this the entire care of collecting fell upon me, added to the already existing and by no means perfunctory cares of superintending the expedition. I had not only to conduct long and wearisome palavers with native chiefs in a language which I had to laboriously acquire, I not only had to show the men how to build houses, where to construct roads and bridges, but I must also shoot and skin birds, gather and press plants, collect beetles, and catch butterflies. In a moist climate like that of Kilima-njaro the labour involved in making good botanical collections alone was very great, and in all this I had no help. M y Zanzibar porters, although excellent, hardworking, faithful fellows, evinced no aptitude whatever for natural-history collecting. In spite of m y repeated and painstaking instructions, they would bring me flowers without leaves and leaves without flowers. They preferred catching butterflies with their fingers to using a net, and thought that an insect in fragments was quite as satisfactory as a whole specimen. In short I found that if any work was to be of use in collecting, it must proceed solely from my own efforts. I merely mention this in order to explain to you the reason why I have not larger collections to lay before you to-night. I will now briefly note the general features of the Zoology of the region I have just visited, confining myself to remarks on such forms as came prominently under my notice. In doing this it will be perhaps more convenient to take the classes, families, and genera in their generally accepted order. To begin with our near kinsfolk, the Monkeys, I found these creatures much more abundantly present in East-Central Africa than during m y journeys on the west coast. Although Western Africa is probably better provided with species of Quadrumana than any other division of the continent, the Monkeys are much scarcer in numbers and harder to see, possibly owing to the density of the forests. During eight months passed on the Congo I only saw Monkeys twice in a wild state, and that in one place only ; and throughout my entire stay of 16 months in West Africa I can only remember six occasions on which I actually beheld these animals in a state of nature. On the other hand, I had scarcely left the East coast to journey towards Kilima-njaro, than Monkeys showed themselves abundantlv in the wilds. The first to attract my attention were the Baboons, probably the species known as the Yellow Baboon. They were generally found on the outskirts of native plantations, where they almost subsisted on the maize and other food-stuffs stolen from the gardens of their more highly developed fellow Primates. In the inhabited region of Kilimanjaro, generally known as the country of Chaga, Baboons were strangely |