Some similar or perhaps the same kind of Baboon lives a more pleasant life than these in another district in the neighbourhood of Angola. There are some most extraordinary rocks which are situated some two hundred or more miles in the interior, and were mentioned more than two centuries ago in the books of missionaries and other travellers as great wonders of nature. They are the Black Rocks of Pungo Andongo. These rocks, rising on the outskirts of a district celebrated for its marvellous fertility and richness of vegetation, are arid-looking on the top, and dark, partly from the natural tint of the stone which is composed of gneiss. They encircle a valley, and extend over about ten square miles, being rugged, or in the form of gigantic pillars. Sloping away from the valley region with its great forests, they present precipitous sides towards it, and are broken up by ravines. At first sight the stone of the precipices appears to be sterile or poor in vegetation, but the nearer the margin of the high land is approached the more luxuriant it becomes, the more flowery the open fields, and the more numerous the crystal brooks. Cultivation goes on here, and grain is carefully sewn, maize especially. In other parts of the valley a dense dark-green primeval forest reaches close to the precipitous and partly sterile walls of rock. The upper part of the precipices and rocks is, however, bare of any shrub or tree-like vegetation, and looks arid enough during the greater part of the year. Now all this is of great importance to the Baboon. He lives on the top of the rocks in hollows and under ledges of stone, and safely placed there in inaccessible places, he surveys the fertile scene below him, and selects the choicest of the fields for the supply of his food. Probably there would be no such oasis in the country were it not for a very curious plant which really gives the name to the “Black Rocks,” and which clothes the hills during the wet season. And if there were no fertile valley the Baboon would certainly not be found in this district. As the wet season progresses, the hills look blacker and blacker, their ruggedness disappears, and even the sterile faces of the precipices grow dark, and the vegetation of the valley appears to crowd up their slope. All this alteration is produced by the vigorous and indeed enormous growth of a singular plant called Scytonema. It retains much moisture within its tangles, and long after the rains have ceased to be felt and to influence the vegetation of the valley, the aridity of the district is antagonised or put off for a while by this interesting property. The Scytonema selects the bare rocks for its favourite locality, and these surround the valley with its teeming vegetation as with a great sponge, whose moisture prolongs the weeks of plant life and of active growth, and adds to a wonderful fertility. With plenty of running water, abundance of food, and a very