at night in my tent, and it was only by holding my blanket over the fire that I could get rid of them.  It is really astonishing how such small bodies can contain so large an amount of ill-nature.  They not only bite, but twist themselves round after the mandibles are inserted, to produce laceration and pain, more than would be effected by the single wound.  Frequently, while sitting on the ox, as he happened to tread near a band, they would rush up his legs to the rider, and soon let him know that he had disturbed their march.  They possess no fear, attacking with equal ferocity the largest as well as the smallest animals.  When any person has leaped over the band, numbers of them leave the ranks and rush along the path, seemingly anxious for a fight.  They are very useful in ridding the country of dead animal matter, and, when they visit a human habitation, clear it entirely of the destructive white ants and other vermin.  They destroy many noxious insects and reptiles.  The severity of their attack is greatly increased by their vast numbers, and rats, mice, lizards, and even the ’Python natalensis’, when in a state of surfeit from recent feeding, fall victims to their fierce onslaught.  These ants never make hills like the white ant.  Their nests are but a short distance beneath the soil, which has the soft appearance of the abodes of ants in England.  Occasionally they construct galleries over their path to the cells of the white ant, in order to secure themselves from the heat of the sun during their marauding expeditions.

January 15th, 1855.  We descended in one hour from the heights of Tala Mungongo.  I counted the number of paces made on the slope downward, and found them to be sixteen hundred, which may give a perpendicular height of from twelve to fifteen hundred feet.  Water boiled at 206 Degrees at Tala Mungongo above, and at 208 Deg. at the bottom of the declivity, the air being at 72 Deg. in the shade in the former case, and 94 Deg. in the latter.  The temperature generally throughout the day was from 94 Deg. to 97 Deg. in the coolest shade we could find.

The rivulets which cut up the valley of Cassange were now dry, but the Lui and Luare contained abundance of rather brackish water.  The banks are lined with palm, wild date-trees, and many guavas, the fruit of which was now becoming ripe.  A tree much like the mango abounds, but it does not yield fruit.  In these rivers a kind of edible muscle is plentiful, the shells of which exist in all the alluvial beds of the ancient rivers as far as the Kuruman.  The brackish nature of the water probably enables it to exist here.  On the open grassy lawns great numbers of a species of lark are seen.  They are black, with yellow shoulders.  Another black bird, with a long tail (’Centropus Senegalensis’), floats awkwardly, with its tail in a perpendicular position, over the long grass.  It always chooses the highest points, and is caught on them with bird-lime,