curious to remark that Pliny was acquainted with this habit (generally overlooked by modern writers) and he describes the "Indians" (?) as sowing their corn in the furrows thus provided for them by the elephants. We have already alluded to the influence of locality on the size of the elephant, and the same remark appears to hold good with other animals. Many of the so-called varieties of antelope are asserted by Dr. Livingstone in a note to his last work to be but local variations of other species already known. The same remark applies to the carnivora; the varieties of lion, the yellow and black, as they are styled by the colonists, thus appear to be one and the same animal at different ages and under the influence of different localities; the darker colour coming with age, and the thickness of the coat and the shagginess of the mane being apparently in a great measure dependent on the nature of the cover frequented by the animal. Mr. Frank Buckland, in his interesting Curiosities of Natural History, Second Series, relates two curious circumstances showing the subtle occult influences of locality on animals when in confinement. Animals in travelling mena geries, he informs us are, as a general rule, more healthy than those confined to one spot, as in the Regent's Park collection. This, too, is shown especially during gestation and parturition. Again, of several pairs of lions (from different places and kept always apart) which were successively placed in one particular cage in the Zoological Society's Collection, the lionesses in each case produced cubs with a singular malformation of the palate of the mouth, the cause being, it is needless to say, inexplicable. We may here briefly refer to the effects instanced in the case of those two formidable foes of domestic animals the "fly,” or tsetse, and the lung sickness or peripneumonia of South Africa, both of which appear so dependent on locality. The 66 Itsetse" is a small active bee-like insect found in certain regions only, which sucks, in mosquito fashion, the blood of every creature it comes across. Its bite is harmless to man (even to the smallest children), to the mule, ass, and goat, to calves while sucking, and to all wild animals; yet it is certain death to the horse, ox, and dog; the symptoms, which last for months, pointing apparently to a strong poison introduced into the system. The localities in which this formidable pest is found are very circumscribed. Dr. Livingstone relates that although the south bank of the river Souta was a noted "fly" district, he found on the north bank the plague was unknown, the river being scarcely fifty yards wide, and tsetse being frequently carried across on the bodies of dead game by the natives. Again, peripneumonia, known as "lung sickness" when it attacks the oxen, and "horse sickness" when it affects the horse, which is in fact the rinderpest of which we have of late had so much bitter experience, and which is equally fatal to domestic cattle and to the bovine antelopes and quaggas, appears unaccountably to be restricted to certain localities. In some parts of the Cape Colony there are very limited tracts of moderate elevation which appear to procure for horses while kept there a perfect immunity from the attacks of the disease from which they have acquired from the Dutch the name "Paarden bergen," or horse hills.* They appear to possess no peculiarities of soil, vegetation, elevation, or climate to distinguish them from other spots around, and the cause of the immunity they enjoy remains as obscure as when it was noticed by the Dutch traveller Sparmann a century ago.† These A remarkable instance of the influence of the animal on the vegetable world, occurs in the migrations of game which annually takes place, from the desert towards the Cape Colony and Natal. In some cases these may be due to the state of the herbage, which varies considerably at different elevations, but in the more marked cases as the migrations of the spring bok (Antilope euchore) this is not the case. animals leave the desert at the time the grass is best, and track down towards the colony. The difficulty of estimating the numbers of a herd of animals in movement is always great; indeed, during the frontier struggles with the Kaffirs, it was always remarked that the number of cattle driven off or recovered, was in every case overrated by the most experienced stock keepers, even where no object was to be gained by misrepresentation. With these antelopes the difficulty is greatly increased by a certain quivering motion of their horns which they maintain, and also by the gleams of white from the beautiful fan like manes which extend along their backs, and which they invariably erect when moving; considering, however, the great numbers afterwards found in the colony when the main body has divided, it appears probable that the estimate which places the numbers at between * There are certain localities in India which appear to be similarly endued in respect to cholera. These have long been known to the natives who suppose them to be under the protection of a "swamy," or deity. The credit of first having called attention to these spots, we believe belongs to Colonel Haley, H.M. 108th Regiment, who has recently referred to them in the United Service Magazine. This disease, which is endemic in a part of the Trans-Vaal territory, becomes annually epidemic throughout a considerable part of the Cape Colony and Natal. Horses which have once passed through the disease are termed "salted," and are supposed to be safe from future attacks, a security which in the case of oxen is sought to be attained by inoculation with a portion of the diseased lung of a dead ox inserted in the fleshy part of the tail, near the root. thirty thousand and forty thousand at starting,* does not exceed the truth. On certain seasons, generally recurring about once in ten years, there is a vast increase in numbers which causes the movement to take some of the features of an American "stampede." We have ourselves witnessed instances on these occasions, when the animals hurried along and seemingly bewildered by the numbers round them have allowed themselves to be caught by the hand. It is to these larger occasional migrations that the Dutch Boers more especially apply the term "trek bokkens." A scarcity of food in certain seasons inducing greater numbers thus to migrate, is the cause usually assigned to these movements, but there is another which we think may have at least an equal share in producing them. These animals are polygamous, consorting in the proportion of four or five females to one male. Now it has been asserted with apparent truth, in the case of animals in a state of domestication that the proportion of the sexes born in different years varies considerably, and it is we think likely that these "trek bokkens" take place when the numbers have been increased by a large preponderance of females born a few seasons previously. Dr. Livingstone assigns another cause, viz., the wary habits of the animals which induce them to leave the high and rank grass and choose more open feeding grounds, an instinct by the way, often displayed by domestic oxen. Wherever the herds of antelope are found, whether the numbers be large or small, they appear materially to influence the herbage of the district they frequent. Their close, cropping bite resembling that of sheep, opens out a place for the young shoots, while their droppings not only fertilize the ground, but return to it the seeds in the form most suitable for fecundation. Dr. Livingstone has related some instances where the game having been destroyed, the grass totally disappeared, being succeeded by a growth of mesembryanthemum-like plants, a change, which it is needless to say, would materially affect the water supply of a scantily watered country.† * They have never been noticed returning to the desert. + The difference in the quality of the flesh of different closely allied varieties of antelope feeding on the same herbage is noteworthy; while the flesh of some is tolerable venison (as the spring bok), that of others (as the rhei bok) is rank carrion. This reminds us that the Dutch colonists have a curious idea respecting the varieties of the common hare, which are very numerous. These animals, they maintain, feed on garbage, an idea certainly confirmed by the places they appear to frequent. To give an example of this habit in a herbivorous animal, the writer remembers many years ago in Lisbon, seeing the goats feeding in the vicinity of the city muzzled, which he was informed was done with a view to prevent their feeding, as they would, if possible, on the offal and impurities that fill the purlieus of that dirtiest of dirty cities. The migratory habits of these animals also prevent the herbage, and consequently the water supply, of any particular district being affected by over-cropping. In the Cape Colony, near Graaf-Reinet (and, we have been told, in some of the Merino districts in Spain), the reverse of this picture may be seen. In these cases, by over-feeding certain of the sheepwalks, the herbage has first become impoverished, and in the end, like the water supply, has nearly disappeared. The numbers of these animals are also kept in check by the large proportion of the carnivora. Lions, indeed, are getting scarce; but the various species of leopard and tigercat, known to the colonists under the general name of tigers, and of hyænas (called wolves), is still very great. The beneficent purpose these animals fulfil in the great scheme of nature, has been so admirably pointed out in the "Bridgewater Treatise" of the late Dean Buckland, that although our limits forbid our transcribing it, we cannot help begging the reader to turn to it. It is, indeed, trite and superfluous to say that this intimate relation between every department of nature may be traced by the attentive observer upon every spot on the earth's surface, but in South Africa it possesses an additional interest from the consideration that while on the one hand (if the surmises of recent geologists as to the antiquity of the present state of the South African continent be correct), there is no region we can point to where those relations AS THEY NOW EXIST, have been longer in force; there is on the other none where the retreat of animal life before the almost imperceptible encroachments of civilized man has been and is progressing in a more marked or obvious manner. * *See Sir R. Murchison's remarks on the South African continent. THE PLANET SATURN. (CONTINUED.) BY THE REV. T. W. WEBB, A.M., F.R.A.S. BEFORE we proceed to review the anomalies exhibited during the lateral presentation of the ring-system, we must take some notice of an idea to which Secchi was conducted by the singular disagreement of the measures which he obtained of it in its more open position. This eminent observer was induced by II.'s suspicions as to the permanency of the ring, and the remarkable differences between the results of the first astronomers-Lassell, Encke, and Galle having given upwards of 1"-5 more than Bessel to the outer diameter of the wholeto use the micrometer largely himself. He found his values on any given evening very accordant among themselves, their discrepancies ranging within 0"3; on different ones perplexingly the reverse, much more so than in the case of double stars; for instance, as the extremes of sixteen nights, 1855, Dec. 15, 41" 443; Dec. 27, 40" 412. A comparison of these variations, which he found in some respects corroborated by the observations of Lassell, Main, and De la Rue, led him to reflect whether the ring, as a whole, might be subject to periodical dilatation, or might be elliptical in form, with a rotation sometimes presenting to us its longer, sometimes its shorter axis. Of these two suppositions he thought the latter the more probable, suggesting a period of about 14h.238; but on the whole considered that there might be not merely ellipticity and rotation, but some actual variation in diameter; hence concluding that there is no reason to fear, with II., a progressive alteration and final destruction of this "beautiful accessory" to the planet. These last expressions of Secchi refer to a singular and impressive speculation of Σ II., who, from a careful comparison of the ancient drawings and measurements, such as they were, of the ansæ and the included space with more modern values, had been induced to believe that the ring-system, especially the inner edge of B, was in a state of such perceptible and rapid approximation to the planet that its ultimate disintegration was now not only a mere question of time, but, as it would seem, of a comparatively short interval. More recently, however, the improbability of this curious hypothesis has been shown by the measurements of Main (then Senior Assistant at Greenwich, now Radcliffe Observer at Oxford); and the ideas of both Σ II. and Secchi, though too interesting to be passed unnoticed in a recital like the present, have been so strongly VOL. X.-NO. I. E |