Here you have a remarkable extension of the South African area of zoological distribution. East of this, from the Upper Zambezi to the Shire river and the east coast of Lake Nyasa (with the Zambezi as a southern boundary) there is an interruption in distributional area which affects certain mammals and birds very curiously. For some the interruption is complete. The Ostrich, the true Gazelles, the Oryxes, the Secretary bird, certain types of Vulture, the Striped Hyena, the Chita or Hunting Leopard, the Caracal Lynx, the Aard Wolf (_Proteles_), the Big-eared Fox (_Otocyon_), the small Desert Foxes, the Black-backed Jackal, the _Pedetes_ or Cape Jumping Hare, the Elephant-shrews, the Mountain Zebras, the White Rhinoceros and, in a lesser degree, the Black, are in a measure confined to north-east and eastern Equatorial Africa on the one hand, and to Africa south of the Zambezi and to Southern Angola on the other. Some of the examples cited stretch across to the Bahr-al-ghazal and even Northern Nigeria from Abyssinia and the Eastern Sudan; others reach Senegal and Western Nigeria beyond the forest zone. But all of the examples cited (besides many more less well-known birds and mammals) seem to be absent from North Angola, Northern Zambezia and Nyasaland, and apparently also from Moçambique. In Moçambique, numerous forms may have been exterminated by the white man and the black hunters, who began shooting here in the 17th century. Yet it is difficult to understand that they could thus have eliminated the Ostrich, Springbok, Striped Hyena (represented in South Africa and Angola by the Brown Hyena), Chita, Caracal, Aard Wolf, and _Pedetes_ rodent, or even the Giraffe. The Giraffe’s distribution conforms somewhat, but not so closely, to similar restrictions. Its least specialized form, perhaps, is the Reticulated Giraffe of Somaliland, whereon the original markings are seen to be white stripes, horizontal and perpendicular, on a red ground. From Somaliland the Giraffe radiates over the eastern Sudan to Northern Nigeria and thence (with gaps) to Senegal. It entirely avoids forested Central and West Africa, though it has a near relation, the Okapi, in the forests of Equatorial Africa east and north of the main Congo river. The distribution of the Giraffe continues south from Uganda and Somaliland to the east of Tanganyika and Nyasa down to the neighbourhood of the Ruvuma river. It has never been reported south of that stream, or until the Lower Zambezi has been _crossed_. A hundred years ago and down to about 1900 it was found in various sub-species and varieties _south_ and _west_ of the Zambezi to Cape Colony and into Southern Angola. But it has never been shown to exist between the Upper Zambezi and the Moçambique coast, north of that river system.