Food; Animals; Climate. 93 two storeys in Sennar, bnt few of them now remain. The architecture, however, is still far superior to that of surrounding districts.

Scattered among the rectangular brick houses are the far more numerous huts of the black population. These •are made of clay and straw, and of the various shapes peculiar to the different races.

Animals and Climate. The horse, the ass, and camel all suffer severely from Animals. the rainy season in Sennar. The cattle are small and ill-conditioned, the sheep tall and without wool.

The dog appears to be a degenerate greyhound, and is very subject to hydrophobia.

The wild animals are not numerous. The elephant, rhinoceros, giraffe, zebra, and antelope keep to the wooded districts of the Abyssinian frontier, or to the forests to the south, and rarely approach the inhabited banks of the river.

The hippopotamus and crocodile are very numerous. The maraffin (hyena) enters the villages at night in search, of dead bodies.

Apes, parrots, baboons, and wolves, leopards, &c, are plentiful in the woods.

The suretah, or fly, that attacks cattle, does not come within two days' journey of Sennar, though other travellers assert that it is most destructive to camels during the rains.

Mosquitoes are very troublesome. Various kinds of scorpions and other reptiles abound ; the bite of the snake known as the assal causes instant death.

Though the limit of tropical rains is marked in maps Rains. in lat. 17° 40' N\, yet, about the Nile, these rains can hardly be said to reach far beyond the 15th parallel. At Khartum, in lat. 15° 37' N., rain falls irregularly, and droughts of long continuation are not unfrequent. Even higher up, where rain never wholly fails, it is still but scanty. But on the marshy plain of Sennar three or four tropical showers are enough for the dhura.

The rains seem to be occasioned by east winds, though, winds from the south, prevail during the wet season, which generally begins in July and continues for two months.