AN AFRICAN " JUNGLE-BOOK."*
M. DU CHAILLU in a very lightly written but sugges- tive volume called The World of the Great Forest has given us an instalment of what might be a most attractive addition to the knowledge of the life of the great African forest. Possibly the author's acquaintance with the beasts, from the ants to the elephants, of this vast, little-known region is not sufficient to furnish full material for a solid book. But he has much to say which is new, and which other travellers have omitted to tell, and has told it pleasantly, and if anything in too simple and unreflective a form. He does not consciously follow Mr. Rudyard Kipling's methods at all ; on the contrary, he is incurably "foreign" in his manner of writing, though the ornate treatment which marred his first narrative of the rediscovery of the gorillas in West Africa does not reappear. In this volume he is simple and direct, and only spoils his stories of the animals by a vague_ nese which constantly fails to supply details which we naturally want to know more of. Do the hippopotami of the West Coast river really go across country for a swim in the Atlantic on moonlight nights ? Where is the " land of plenty " to which the monkeys migrate ? What are the fish which regularly travel up the rivers from the sea in the dry season to spawn ? Where is the place where the forest eagles cross that great continent to rear their young ? These questions are among many suggested by the book.
• The World of the Great Forest. By Paid du Cbsallu. With over 50 Illustrations by C. R. Knight and J. M. Gleason. London: John Murray.
.r75. 6c1.1, .
The animals dealt with are of all kinds, great and small, many being just those creatures the habits of which few travellers have either had the time or taken the trouble to observe care- fully,—civets, ichneumons, the great manatees in the rivers, the forest monkeys, the fish, the forest eagles and fishing eagles, and the snakes. The native African names are used in every case, and the reader is always conscious of the environment of the tropical forests, their sun and storms, under the unstable, throbbing, feverish African equator. He has brought together the life of the African forest creatures. Hitherto in nearly all books dealing with the interior of the continent eaeh species has been described by itself, or in connection mainly with the social or family life of its kind. In M. du Chaillu's pages we are enabled to see something of the relationship of the non-related dwellers in this little-known region. Brehm did the same in bringing together the " aspects of Nature" on the veld, and those uplands which he aptly terms the South African steppe, the life of steppe and veld being so far parallel as to make the identity of treatment suggestive. M. du Chaillu's work stands alone, if we except the musings of Waterton in the forests of Guiana, and it is the more regrettable that it is only a sketch. The region to which his chapters have reference is enormous, and the conditions of life in it are unusually similar. Any one standing on the moun- tains west of the great central rifts looks over a land as wide as the whole of India, mainly covered with forest, and watered by the innumerable great rivers which flow into the Congo. This is the land of the hippopotamus, the grey parrot, the driver ant, the great forest apes, the scaly ant- eater, the vast fish fauna of the Congo basin, and the birds of the Congo swamps. It is also the land of fever, of no roads, and impassable jungles. That is why most people have not had leisure to observe and put together its animal life. Professor Henry Drummond did this for one or two aspects of Eastern Central Africa. But that was not the land of thick forest.
How difficult it is for man to live in the West African forest appeared during the Stanley expedition to relieve Emin. There is no abundance of food as in tropical India. Most of the animals, from the great apes to the forest spiders, suffer in the same way, and have to work desperately hard to make a living. The monkeys and apes are often driven to a diet of leaves, and the former wander great distances in search of fruit, and when that fails, of nuts. Every year the mon- keys make a long forest migration for food, travelling many hundreds of miles. At least eight species make this overhead " trek " across the ocean of tree-tops, each troop hurrying to outstrip the other, and no two species mingling. Their mode of travelling on these journeys is quite different from their aimless rambles at other times, and they travel silently, at a rate of about fifteen miles an hour, and it is believed that they know all the trees, tracks, and landmarks on the way.
The glimpses of life on the great rivers are most sug- gestive. One African river only is familiar, the Nile, which is itself so peculiar and alone that the life of the creatures on it and in it is isolated. The ways of Nile crocodiles, hippopotami, fish, and birds are not necessarily identical with those of similar creatures on other African rivers. There is no fish migration up the Nile. Up the Western rivers there is. Many species pour in from the sea when the waters are low in the dry season, and go back to the river in which they were hatched to lay their eggs, and are followed up the rivers by the fish-eating birds and sea eagles. In the Nile there is but one species of crocodile ; in the Western rivers there are at least two. One is the burrowing crocodile, not a large species, which digs out a hole in the river bank, or in sloping ground close to the river. It is a nocturnal animal, and must be a deadly foe to small mammals coming to drink, as it rushes out from its burrow and intercepts them when the water is in front, and cuts off their retreat. In the lower portions of these rivers there is also a very large manatee, living much as the smaller manatee does in the Amazons. This manatee appears also to be captured in Lake Tchad, and is from 10ft. to 12 ft. in length. Its presence in the great West African rivers has always been known to naturalists, but it is not familiar to English readers as a common object in river life, thrusting its head and shoulders out of the water to browse on over-
banging leaves and keeping its vertical position by the move- ments of its paddles. Hippopotamus life on this vast net- work of rivers is unlike that on the Nile. The "hippos " travel from stream to stream, making short cuts across country, or founding new colonies. They lead a perfectly harmless,
contented existence, with a social life of their own. Thus, according to M. du Chaillu, each pair of "hippos" have a shoal of their own to lie on, which is their own particular property.
In the river, or on the plains by night, they mingle in good fellowship. But a hippopotamus's shoal is his castle, and any other which trespasses is attacked and bitten. " Ngooboo," the native name of the hippopotamus in West African, is more pronounceable than our Greek equivalent done into English :—
" It is the custom of the Ng ooboos living in this river to cross the plain and bathe in the Atlantic two or three times a year. One day it was agreed among all the families that they should go t the beach the following night and enjoy themselves by swimming in the surf if the sea was not too rough. So when night came they landed from the river and began their journey on towards the seashore. It was full moon and the journey was made without mishaps. One family after another arrived on the beach. They were greatly excited and talked among them- selves. Thera was great rejoh:ing among them. They sniffed the sea•breeze, and looked at the surf and the broad sea before them, and wondered why there was not a shore on the other side as by the river. Than the leaders of the different families said to their followers, 'Let us go into the sea.' They grunted and snorted on the way, walked slowly through the surf, and losing their footing, began to swim, though they dared not go far."
The description of the bathing of the "hippo" "trippers" which follows, from their cautious entry into the sea to their return at 4 a.m., " when each family went back to its shoal," hardly bears quoting, but the idea is novel and amusing. The illus- trations of the life of these creatures and of their sea- side party by Mr. Gleeson are really admirable. The native
names of most animals are short. An exception is that of the great forest eagle, the monkey-eater. It is one of the crested hawk-eagles, of which the native name is " guanionien." The difficulties of these birds' life when monkeys are scarce ; their power of soaring to such vast heights as to be invisible to the monkeys, and of dropping down from the blue, whence their keen eyes see the monkeys on the tree-tops ; of their hovering over the tops of certain trees on which fruit grows which the monkeys will probably come to gather,—are all fresh and vivid.
The illustrations are good throughout, but the reader must not expect to find any consecutive story in the book,
or even a connected sketch of the common forest fauna. It is only a slight series of animal stories, with a very fresh side to them.
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