The surface of all this sub-region is generally open, covered with a vegetation of high grasses or thorny shrubs, with scattered trees and isolated patches of forest in favourable situations. The only parts where extensive continuous forests occur, are on the eastern and western slopes of the great Abyssinian plateau, and on the Mozambique coast from Zanzibar to Sofala. The whole of this great district has one general zoological character. Many species range from Senegal to Abyssinia, others from Abyssinia to the Zambesi, and a few, as _Mungos fasciatus_ and _Phacochoerus æthiopicus_, range over the entire sub-region. _Fennecus_, _Ictonyx_, and several genera of antelopes, characterise every part of it, as do many genera of birds. _Coracias nævia_, _Corythornis cyanostigma_, _Tockus nasutus_, _T. erythrorhynchus_, _Parus leucopterus_, _Buphaga africana_, _Vidua paradisea_, are examples of _species_, which are found in the Gambia, Abyssinia and South East Africa, but not in the West African sub-region; and considering how very little is known of the natural history of the country immediately south of the Sahara, it may well be supposed that these are only a small portion of the species really common to the whole area in question, and which prove its fundamental unity. Although this sub-region is so extensive and so generally uniform in physical features, it is by far the least peculiar part of Africa. It possesses, of course, all those wide-spread Ethiopian types which inhabit every part of the region, but it has hardly any special features of its own. The few genera which are peculiar to it have generally a limited range, and for the most part belong, either to the isolated mountain-plateau of Abyssinia which is almost as much Palæarctic as Ethiopian, or to the woody districts of Mozambique where the fauna has more of a West or South African character. {260}_Mammalia._--The only forms of Mammalia peculiar to this sub-region are _Theropithecus_, one of the Cynopithecidæ confined to Abyssinia; _Petrodromus_ and _Rhynchocyon_, belonging to the insectivorous Macroscelididæ, have only been found in Mozambique; the Antelopine genus _Neotragus_, from Abyssinia southward; _Saccostomus_ and _Pelomys_ genera of Muridæ inhabiting Mozambique; _Heterocephalus_ from Abyssinia, and _Heliophobius_ from Mozambique, belonging to the Spalacidæ; and _Pectinator_ from Abyssinia, belonging to the Octodontidæ. _Cynocephalus_, _Rhinoceros_, _Camelopardalis_, and antelopes of the genera _Oryx_, _Cervicapra_, _Kobus_, _Nanotragus_, _Cephalophus_, _Hippotragus_, _Alcephalus_, and _Catoblepas_, are characteristic; as well as _Felis_, _Hyæna_, and numerous civets and ichneumons.