FOOTNOTES:[81]In the southern provinces of Bornou this is pronouncedParo.
FOOTNOTES:
[81]In the southern provinces of Bornou this is pronouncedParo.
[81]In the southern provinces of Bornou this is pronouncedParo.
Begharmi Vocabulary, taken from the mouth of the late Sultan’s son, now a slave of the Sheikh of Bornou.
Mandara Vocabulary, taken from the mouth of Achmet Mandara, a slave of the Sheikh of Bornou.
Timbuctoo Vocabulary.
Having been requested by the authors of the preceding narrative to describe the Zoological subjects collected during their journey, we think it right, in the first place, to notice the difficulties attending their acquisition and preservation. The European traveller, who is transported with equal comfort over the rugged heights of Mont Cenis, or along the level plains of Holland, can have little conception of the privations and distresses which attend the wanderer in the desert. The most feeble and timid may encounter the first task without fatigue or fear; but therobur et æs triplexof a strong constitution, persevering patience, and undaunted courage, must fortify his resolution who directs his daring course through the sands of the Sahara.
Having arrived at the farthest point of their route, our travellers were occupied no less than five months in their return to Tripoli, pursuing their “weary way” almost wholly through deserts, and suffering severely by sickness and all sorts of privations. Their means, too, of skinning and preserving the animals they procured were of the slightest kind; the only cutting instrument they possessed being a penknife belonging to Major Denham, and a little arsenical soap, left from the stores of the late Mr. Ritchie, their sole antidote to protect the skins from moth and corruption. Such, however, was their ardour in the pursuit of Zoological subjects, that in spite of all the difficulties and drawbacks that beset them, they succeeded in collecting and bringing home upwards of a hundred specimens, and some of them in exceedingly good condition and of peculiar interest; though we regret to say, that less than a third of that number is all that have come into our hands, many of the subjects having fallen into utter decay.
Species 1.—Fennecus Cerdo.
Fennec.Bruce, vii. 231. (8vo). pl. 28.Animal Anonyme.Buff. Supp.iii. 128. pl. 19. (1776).Zerda.Penn. Quad.pag. 248. pl. 28.Canis Cerdo.Gmel. Linn.Fennecus Brucii.Desm. Mamm.pl. 108. f. 4.Canis Megalotis.Griff. An. King.
This beautiful and extraordinary animal, or at least one of this genus, was first made known to European naturalists by Bruce, who received it from his drogoman, whilst consul general at Algiers. It was brought from Biscara by a Turkish soldier, from whom the janizary bought it, and who said it was not uncommon at that place, but was more frequently met with in the date territories of Beni Mezzab and Werglah, where these animals are hunted for their skins, which are afterwards sold at Mecca, and thence exported to India. Bruce kept his animal alive for several months, and took a drawing of it in water colours, of the natural size; a copy of which, on transparent paper, was clandestinely made by his servant. On leaving Algiers, Bruce gave the animal to Captain Cleveland, of the Royal Navy, who made a present of it to Mr. Brander, the Swedish consul. Mr. Brander, according to Sparman, as quoted by Bruce, gave an account of the animal in “some Swedish Transactions,” but refused to let the figure be published, the drawing having been unfairly obtained. Bruce asserts that this animal is described in many Arabian books, under the name ofEl Fennec, by which, he adds, that it is known all over Africa; he conceives the appellation to be derived from the Greek word φοινιξ, a palm, or date tree.
Drawn by Major Denham.Engraved by E. Finden.FENNECUS CERDO.Published Feb. 1826, by John Murray, London.
Drawn by Major Denham.Engraved by E. Finden.FENNECUS CERDO.Published Feb. 1826, by John Murray, London.
FENNECUS CERDO.
Published Feb. 1826, by John Murray, London.
After Bruce left Algiers, he met with two other Fennecs, one of which had been brought by the caravan of Fezzan to the Island of Gerba, from whence it was carried to Tunis, where Bruce saw it; the other he bought at Sennaar, but where it came from he knew not; though it seems probable that it was a native of the date villages in the desert of Selima. These animals exactly resembled the one first seen at Algiers, and were known by the name of Fennec, and by no other.
The favourite food of Bruce’s Fennec was dates, or any sweet fruit; but it was also very fond of eggs: when hungry it would eat bread, especially with honey or sugar. His attention was immediately attracted if a bird flew near him, and he would watch it with an eagerness that could hardly be diverted from its object; but he was dreadfully afraid of a cat, and endeavoured to hide himself the moment he saw an animal of that species, though he showed no symptoms of preparing for any defence. Bruce never heard that he had any voice. During the day he was inclined to sleep, but became restless and exceedingly unquiet as night came on.
Bruce describes his Fennec as about ten inches long; the tail, five inches and a quarter, near an inch of it on the tip, black; from the point of the fore-shoulder to that of the fore-toe, two inches and seven-eighths; from the occiput to the point of the nose, two inches and a half. The ears were erect, and three inches and three-eighths long, with a plait or fold at the bottom on the outside; the interior borders of the ears were thickly covered with soft white hair, but the middle part was bare, and of a pink or rose colour; the breadth of the ears was one inch and one eighth, and the interior cavity very large. The pupil of the eye was large and black; the iris, deep blue. It had thick and strong whiskers; the nose was sharp at the tip, black and polished. The upper jaw was projecting; the number of cutting teeth in each jaw, six, those in the under jaw the smallest; canine teeth, two in each jaw, long, large, and exceedingly pointed; the number of molar teeth, four on each side, above and below. The legs were small; feet very broad, with four toes, armed with crooked, black, and sharp claws on each; those on the fore-feet more crooked and sharp than those behind. The colour of the body was dirty white, bordering on cream-colour; the hair on the belly rather whiter, softer and longer than on the rest of the body.His look was sly and wily. Bruce adds that the Fennec builds his nest on trees, and does not burrow in the earth.
Illiger, in his generic description ofMegalotis, states the number of molar teeth on each side of the upper jaw to be six, but gives no account of those in the lower; nor does it appear on what authority he describes the teeth at all, or where he inspected his type. In other respects, his description agrees pretty closely with that given by Bruce.
Sparman[82]took the Fennec to be of the species he has called Zerda, a little animal found in the sands of Cambeda, near the Cape of Good Hope; and Pennant and Gmelin have called Bruce’s animal, after Sparman,Canis cerdo; Brander considered it as a species of fox; Blumenbach rather as belonging to the Viverræ. Illiger quotes Lacépède as having made a distinct genus of it,Fennecus[83], and has himself placed it as one, under the name of Megalotis, in the order Falculata, in the same family with, and immediately preceding the genera Canis and Hyena.
M. Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, assuming Bruce’s account to be imperfect and inaccurate, supposes that the Fennec is neither more nor less than a Galago; but M. Desmarest differs from him in opinion, and places it in a situation analogous to that assigned it by Illiger, at the end of the Digitigrades, in the order Carnassiers. Cuvier merely takes the following short notice of this animal in a note, “Le Fennec de Bruce que Gmelin a nomméCanis cerdo, et IlligerMegalotis, est trop peu connu pour pouvoir être classé. C’est un petit animal d’Afrique, dont les oreilles égalent presque le corps en grandeur, et qui grimpe aux arbres, mais on n’en a descrit ni les dents ni les doigts.” (Reg. Anim. I. 151. note). This eminent zoologist appears from the above to hold our countryman’s veracity, or at least his accuracy of observation, and fidelity of description, in the same low estimation as M. Geoffroy Saint Hilaire; or he would hardly have talked of the ears of the Fennec being nearly as large as its body[84], or have asserted thatneither the teeth nor toes have been described. But the illustrious foreigners of whom we have, in no offensive tone we hope, just spoken, are not the only persons who have hesitated to place implicit confidence in all that Bruce has given to the world: his own countrymen have shown at least an equal disposition to set him down as a dealer in the marvellous. Time, however, and better experience, are gradually doing the Abyssinian traveller that justice which his cotemporaries were but too ready to deny him.
M. Desmarest considers all the characters which Bruce has given of the Fennec as correct, “not conceiving it possible, that he could have assumed the far too severe tone he adopted in speaking of Sparman and Brander, if he had not been perfectly sure of his facts.”
Mr. Griffith has given the figures of two animals, both, as he conceives, belonging to this genus; one of them came from the Cape of Good Hope, and is now in the Museum at Paris; it is named by CuvierCanis megalotis, and is described by Desmarest in his Mammalogie, (Ency. Meth. Supp. p. 538): Major Smith has called itMegalotis Lalandii, to distinguish it from Bruce’s Fennec. The other animal is from the interior of Nubia, and is preserved in the Museum at Frankfort. Both the figures are from the accurate and spirited pencil of Major Hamilton Smith. The first animal is as large as the common fox, and decidedly different from Bruce’s Fennec; the second, Major Smith considers to be Bruce’s animal.
In the fifth volume of the Bulletin des Sciences, sect. 2. p. 262., is an extract from a memoir of M. Leuckart, (Isis, 2 Cahier, 1825), on theCanis cerdo, or Zerda of naturalists, in which it is stated that M. M. Temminck and Leuckart saw the animal in the Frankfort Museum, which had been previously drawn by Major Smith, and recognized it for the true Zerda; and the former gentleman, in the prospectus of hisMonographies de Mammalogie, announced it as belonging to the genus Canis, and not to that of Galago. M. Leuckart coincides in opinion with M. Temminck, and conceives that the genus Megalotis, or Fennecus, must be suppressed, “the animal very obviously belonging to the genus Canis, and even to the subgenusVulpes.” He adds, “that it most resembles theC. corsac; the number of teeth and their form are precisely the same as those of the fox, which it also greatly resembles in its feet, number of toes, and form of tail. The principal difference between the fox and the Zerda consists in the great length of the ears of the latter and its very small size.”
The singular controversy, not even yet decided, that has arisen respecting this little animal, has induced us to preface our description of the individual before us, by this sketch of its history.
Fennecus.Dentium formula.—Dentes primores6—66—6,laniarii1—11—1,molares6—67—7?
F. supra rufescenti-albus, subtus pallidior; maculâ suboculari rufâ; caudæ maculâ sub-basali nigrescenti-brunneâ, apice nigro.
The general colour is white, slightly inclining to straw-yellow; above, from the occiput to the insertion of the tail it is light rufous brown, delicately pencilled with fine black lines, from thinly scattered hairs tipped with black; the exterior of the thighs is lighter rufous brown; the chin, throat,belly, and interior of the thighs and legs are white, or cream colour. The nose is pointed, and black at the extremity; above, it is covered with very short, whitish hair inclining to rufous, with a small irregular rufous spot on each side beneath the eyes; the whiskers are black, rather short and scanty; the back of the head is pale rufous brown. The ears are very large, erect, and pointed, and covered externally with short, pale, rufous-brown hair; internally, they are thickly fringed on the margins with long greyish-white hairs, especially in front; the rest of the ears, internally, is bare; externally, they are folded or plaited at the base. The tail is very full, cylindrical, of a rufous-brown colour, and pencilled with fine black lines like the back; its colour is rather deeper above than on the under part, and there is a small dark brown spot, at about an inch below its insertion on the upper side; the ends of the hairs at the extremity of the tail are black, forming a black tip about three quarters of an inch long. The anterior feet are pentadactylous, the posterior tetradactylous, and both are covered to the claws with moderately long whitish hairs, slightly inclining to straw-yellow; the claws are of a yellowish-white, or light horn-colour, moderately hooked, very much compressed, and very sharp; those on the hinder toes are most compressed, longest, and least arched. The fur is very soft and fine; that on the back, from the forehead to the insertion of the tail, as well as that on the upper part of the shoulder before, and nearly the whole of the hinder thigh, is formed of tri-coloured hairs, the base of which is of a dark lead colour, the middle white, and the extremity light rufous brown.
The teeth of our animal are much worn, apparently by age; the incisors in the upper jaw are nearly even, the second pair rather broader than the rest; of those in the lower jaw, the outer pair are considerably the largest.
The imperfect state of the teeth, and the difficulty of examining them accurately without having the skull detached, forbids us to be confident as to the number of grinders in either jaw. From the most careful inspection, however, that we could make in the actual state of the specimen, we are inclined to believe that the system of dentition closely, if not exactly, resembles that of the dog. In the present state of uncertainty, whilst opinions of the highest authority are so discordant as to the genus to which this animal should be referred, we do not feel ourselves at liberty to disturb the arrangement adopted by Lacépède, Illiger, and Desmarest, but leave the ultimatedecision of the question to future naturalists, who may possess more unequivocal data for its solution. One thing, indeed, is pretty obvious, namely, that if Major Denham’s animal be not the identical species described by Bruce, it certainly belongs to the same genus; for as it does not appear that Bruce himself ever possessed a detached skull of the Fennec, it is very easy to imagine that he could not accurately ascertain the number of molar teeth in the head of a living animal of such vivacity and quickness, and which was so impatient of being handled, that he could not obtain a correct measurement of its ears, or even count the number of paps on its belly. With such an animal it is not unlikely, moreover, that the two last tubercular grinders should escape the notice of any one attempting to examine the mouth under circumstances so disadvantageous, those teeth being in some measure concealed by the large projecting carnivorous tooth immediately before them. That it cannot be aGalago, as M. Geoffroy Saint Hilaire imagines, is sufficiently evident; and M. Desmarest has given no less than six distinct, and, we think, conclusive reasons against that opinion, through which, however, we must not follow him at present. The subject has already grown under our hands to a far greater bulk than we intended, and we conclude it by taking leave to question the validity of M. Geoffroy Saint Hilaire’s argument respecting the general veracity of Mr. Bruce, and consequently to enter our protest against his Fennec being classed with theQuadrumana.
We retain, provisionally, the generic name ofFennecus, first proposed by Lacépède, and the specific one ofCerdo, adopted by Gmelin; but should the animal ultimately prove to be a different species fromCanis cerdo, M. Desmarest’s specific appellation ofBruciimay with propriety be assigned to it.
Species 2.—Ryzæna tetradactyla.
Viverra tetradactyla.Gmel.I. 85.Suricate.Buff.xiii. t. 8.
This animal was found on the banks of the rivers in the neighbourhood of Lake Tchad.
Species 3.—Gulo capensis.
Gulo Capensis.Desm. Mamm.p. 176.Viverra mellivora.Gmel.I. 91.Ratel.Sparman.Ratel weesel.Penn. Quad.II. 66.
The natives, from whom Major Denham had all the following particulars, informed him, that during the rutting season theRatelis very fierce, not hesitating to attack a man. Each male has two or three females, whom he scarcely suffers to be a moment out of his sight; if either of them escape his jealous vigilance, and leave him for a short time, she is sure to receive severe chastisement at her return. This animal is very easily killed; a single blow on the nose, which seems peculiarly sensible of the slightest injury, instantly despatches him.
Species 4.—Cercopithecus ruber.
Cercopithecus ruber.Geoff. Ann. du Mus.xix. 96.Simia rubra.Gmel.I. 34.Le Patas.Buff.xiv. pl. 25 and 26.Red Monkey.Penn. Quad.I. 208.
Species 5.—Camelopardalis Giraffa.
Camelopardalis Giraffa.Gmel.I. 181.Cervus Camelopardalis.Linn.I. 92.Giraffe.Buff.XIII. p. 1.Camelopard.Penn. Quad.I. 65.
TheGiraffeswere found on the south-eastern side of Lake Tchad, generally in parties of from two to five or six. They are tolerably numerous, but not very common. The motion of these animals is not elegant; their pace is a short canter, in which they seem to drag their hind legs after them, in an awkward fashion: their speed, however, is such as to keep a horse at a pretty smart gallop. The skin brought home by Major Denham is that of a young animal, not above a year and a half or two years old; the colours are very much lighter than on the skin of an adult animal. In its wild state, theGiraffecarries its head remarkably erect; a character which, Major Denham remarks, is not faithfully preserved in any figure he has seen of this animal.
Species 6.—Antilope Senegalensis.
Antilope Senegalensis.Desm. Mamm.p. 457.Le Koba.Buff.xii. pl. 32. f. 2.Senegal Antelope.Penn. Quad.I. 103.
Only the head and horns of this animal were brought home by Major Denham; it was found on the plains of central Africa. The natives call this speciesKorrigum.
Species 7—Antilope bezoartica.
Antilope gazella.Gmel.I. 190.Capra bezoartica.Linn.I. 96.Algazelle.Buff.xii. pl. 33. f. 1, 2.Algazel Antelope.Penn. Quad.I. 77.
Linnæus’s description ofCapra bezoarticaspeaks of the horns as being “entirely annulated;” but Brisson, to whom Linnæus refers, says they are annulated nearly to the end. In our specimens, a considerable extent from theapexis without the rings. This difference may probably arise from age. In other respects, the horns before us perfectly answer the description of those of Linnæus’sCapra bezoartica. M. Gmelin seems to have made some confusion between theCapra GazellaandC. bezoarticaofLinnæus. He has changed the specific name ofGazellainto that oforyx, and he has made Linnæus’sbezoarticatheGazellaof himself.
Only two horns of this species, and those apparently not fellows, were sent home. This animal was found on the south side of the River Shary, in central Africa.
Species 8.—Antilope cervicapra.
Antilope cervicapra.Pall.Capra cervicapra.Linn.I. 96.Antilope.Buff.xii. pl. 35 and 36.Common Antelope.Penn. Quad.I. 89.
We have only the horns of this animal. Its African name isEl Buger Abiad, or theWhite Cow.
Species 9.—Bos taurus.
Bos taurus.Linn.t. I. 98.
Major Denham brought home a pair of horns of enormous size, belonging evidently, from their form, texture, and mode of insertion, to a variety of the common Ox, of which he states that two kinds exist in central Africa, one with a hump before, and very small horns; the other altogether of a larger size, also with a hump, and immense horns.
The circumference of one of the horns before us, at the largest part near the base, is twenty-three inches and a quarter; its length, following the line of curvature, three feet, six inches and a half. It has two curves; and weighs six pounds and seven ounces. Internally it is extremely cellular, or rather cavernous.
Species 10.—Bos bubalis.
Bos bubalis.Linn.I. 99.Le Buffle.Buff.xi. pl. 25.Buffalo.Penn. Quad.I. 28.
We possess the head, with the horns. The name by which the native Africans call this animal isZamouse.
Species 11.—Rhinoceros bicornis.
Rhinoceros bicornis.Gmel.I. 57.Rhinoceros unicornis. var. β.bicornis.Linn.I. 104.Rhinoceros Africanus.Cuv.Rhinoceros d’Afrique.Buff. Supp.vi. pl. 6.Two-horned Rhinoceros.Penn. Quad.i. 150. pl. 29.
Here again we have the horns only. The local name of this animal is Gargatan.
Species 12.—Sciurus Dschinschicus.
Sciurus Dschinschicus.Gmel.I. 151.Sciurus albovittatus.Desm. Mamm.p. 338.
Our species agrees exactly with M. Desmarest’s account of hisS. albovittatus, except that the tail is rather more decidedly distich than that of the individual he describes; but the dried state of the skin before us prevents our ascertaining its form very minutely. M. Desmarest refers to pl. 89 of Sonnerat’s Voyage, vol. ii. for a figure of his Ecurieul de Gingi, which he quotes as a variety of this species; on looking into Sonnerat, we do not find any figure at all of this animal referred to by that author. Plate 89 is a figure of theMaquis à Bourres.
Species 13.—Hystrix cristata.
Hystrix cristata.Linn.I. 74.Porc-épic.Buff.xii. pl. 51.Crested Porcupine.Penn. Quad.
Species 1.—Vultur fulvus.