In the same way, when I entered a new district, the birds merely flew up into a lofty tree without attempting to go farther away, and it was not until I had shot for a day or two in the neighbourhood of a place that the birds there became at all wild. The native dog, doubtless being dependent for subsistence upon the game he can procure, must contribute to thin the numbers of the lesser animals, who also, together perhaps with the rapacious dog himself, frequently fall a prey to the various snakes that inhabit the country; as was evinced in the event narrated on the 16th of March of the destruction, by Mr. Lushington, of the boa with a small kangaroo compressed in its folds. The manner, too, in which I have seen the rapacious birds of prey soar over plains where the small kangaroos abound, convinces me that they also bear their part in the destruction of this harmless race. TRACES OF AN ANIMAL WITH A DIVIDED HOOF. I have already alluded to the paucity of quadrupeds, both in species and in number, but I have still to record the remarkable fact of the existence in these parts of a large quadruped with a divided hoof: this animal I have never seen, but twice came upon its traces. On one occasion I followed its track for above a mile and a half, and at last altogether lost it in rocky ground. The footmarks exceeded in size those of a buffalo, and it was apparently much larger, for, where it had passed through brushwood, shrubs of considerable size in its way had been broken down and, from the openings there left, I could form some comparative estimate of its bulk. These tracks were first seen by a man of the name of Mustard, who had joined me at the Cape, and who had there been on the frontier during the Kaffir war; he told me that he had seen the spoor of a buffalo, imagining that they were here as plentiful as in Africa. I conceived at the time that he had made some mistake, and paid no attention to him until I afterwards twice saw the same traces myself. BIRDS. To describe the birds common to these parts requires more time than to detail the names of the few quadrupeds to be found; indeed in no other country that I have yet visited do birds so abound. Even the virgin forests of South America cannot, in my belief, boast of such numerous feathered denizens; yet I cannot, after all, assert that the number of genera and species is at all proportionate to that of individual birds. The contrary is probably the real case. BEAUTY OF THE BIRDS. The birds of this country possess in many instances an excessively beautiful plumage; and he alone who has traversed these wild and romantic regions, who has beheld a flock of many-coloured parakeets sweeping like a moving rainbow through the air whilst the rocks and dells resounded with their playful cries, can form any adequate idea of the scenes that there burst on the eyes of the wondering naturalist.