PRODUCTS. 231 and laid it on the sand at a distance of a few paces from the water. Its prize consisted of a larger or smaller nmnber of these shells according to their size. It generally collected about twelve on one spot, but as these conchylia are bivalvular, and the one shell is so firmly connected with the other that they can only be opened with a knife, it had to wait until the rays of the sun performed the office for it. He continually walked round the spot where he had deposed his prey, and kept his eye upon it. As soon, however, as one of these mollusca opened its shell he instantly inserted his beak, to prevent it from closing it again, and tore it asunder with his claw. I never disturbed him in his work, for he saved me the trouble of destroying the animal and clearing the shell, which, as I knew by experience, he seldom entirely separates.

Kordofan can enumerate no running streams ; the fula (ponds) and small lakes nearly all dry up during the hot season, and yet fish, differing in variety and size, are to be found in this province. At first, I could not understand this apparent anomaly, and the explanation given me by the natives, that the fish hide themselves in the mud, appeared to me very unsatisfactory', for it becomes in time, so hard that a heavily laden waggon might pass over it, and the spawn of the fish remaining would, of course, be soon destroyed by the rays of the sun. The natives, however, firmly believe that the fish are preserved under ground, and come to life again in three or