FAMINE AND PLENTY 187 versus swiftness of leg. That a bat should consider a lizard his prey, or vice versa, seemed unlikely, yet the evolutions performed left no doubt, and were only ended by the entrance of a servant.

In this country the lives of cattle alternate between conditions of plenty and famine. These are nothing if not extreme. 1908 was remarkable in the Sudan for the superfluity of maize, which was left to rot in the fields. At other times or in other places dhurra may be so scarce as to cause famine, requiring the good offices of Government. So, in the wet season, unfortunate is the animal which does not get sleek and fat on the abounding green grass. He requires all his flesh to carry him through the dry season, and at the end he resembles a bag of dry bones. But if the fat kine become scarecrows in these terrible months, how fares it with the lean? They fall lower and lower, dying by inches, becoming the prey of a smaU but terrible fly, which, as the poor beast rolls on the ground in endeavours to rid himself of it, swarms in great numbers reciprocatingly to the side which comes uppermost. Thus the suffering animal is badgered to death.

AValking down one day to the river, our eyes were directed to a woman approaching us, with a comparative grace and distinction most unusual in this land of unsesthetic form. She carried the usual calabash on her head for her husband, from the waist upward her body was only half veiled by a semitransparent cloth, and her features and figure were