[South Africa.]--The instances are very numerous in South Africa where the Boers and half-castes amuse themselves with rearing zebras, antelopes, and the like; but I have not found many instances among the native races. Those that are best known to us are mostly nomad and in a chronic state of hunger, and therefore disinclined to nurture captured animals as pets; nevertheless, some instances can be adduced. Livingstone alludes to an extreme fondness for small tame singing-birds (pp. 324 and 453). Dr. (now Sir John) Kirk, who accompanied him in later years, mentions guinea-fowl--that do not breed in confinement, and are merely kept as pets--in the Shiré valley, and Mr. Oswell has furnished me with one similar anecdote. I feel, however, satisfied that abundant instances could be found if properly sought for. It was the frequency with which I recollect to have heard of tamed animals when I myself was in South Africa, though I never witnessed any instance, that first suggested to me the arguments of the present paper. Sir John Kirk informs me that: "As you approach the coast or Portuguese settlements, pets of all kinds become very common; but then the opportunity of occasionally selling them to advantage may help to increase the number; still, the more settled life has much to do with it." In confirmation of this view, I will quote an early writer, Pigafetta (_Hakluyt Coll._, ii. 562), on the South African kingdom of Congo, who found a strange medley of animals in captivity, long before the demands of semi-civilisation had begun to prompt their collection:-- The King of Congo, on being Christianised by the Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth century, "signified that whoever had any idols should deliver them to the lieutenants of the country. And within less than a month all the idols which they worshipped were brought into court, and certainly the number of these toys was infinite, for every man adored what he liked without any measure or reason at all. Some kept serpents of horrible figures, some worshipped the greatest goats they could get, some leopards, and others monstrous creatures. Some held in veneration certain unclean fowls, etc. Neither did they content themselves with worshipping the said creatures when alive, but also adored the very skins of them when they were dead and stuffed with straw." [Australia.]--Mr. Woodfield records the following touching anecdote in a paper communicated to the Ethnological Society, as occurring in an unsettled part of West Australia, where the natives rank as the lowest race upon the earth:--