It is not difficult to understand how people like the Dinka should make their whole delight to centre in having thriving cattle-farms, but to us their profitless practice of emasculation must remain incomprehensible. The herdsmen cut their bulls and bucks with the mere intention of feasting their eyes upon a development of fat which is always obnoxious to the stomach. Almost the third part of their bulls are submitted to the knife, and the same proportion of their goats and rams, and even their dogs, with the design of rendering them more agile, more, enduring, and fitter for the chase; this also being the reason why their ears and tails are clipped. Ask the Dinka what good they get from their possessions of oxen, and they have ever the answer ready that it is quite enough if they get fat and look nice. Such is the way in which they express their satisfaction and their pride. The failure of the beard amongst the male cattle so treated is a topic that suggests some observations. In spite of the anxiety and care which the Dinka bestow upon their herds, there is no mistake about the degeneration of the race. The way in which I chiefly account for this is that there is not enough crossing of breeds—in fact, that there is almost a total exclusion of any strange stock. I should say that hardly one in a hundred of the beasts is capable of either bearing a burden or going a journey, a purpose, however, to which none of the negroes of the Upper Nile ever seem to put them. But nothing is more remarkable than the entire absence of fat which characterises them; a single pound of fat could not be obtained from a whole ox; and not only does this deficiency extend to the parts that are ordinarily plump and fleshy, but the spinal marrow itself is so utterly dry that in a stewpan it runs off like white of egg, without depositing a particle of grease. Eye-witnesses have assured me that Miss Tinné, during her residence here, although she had whole herds at her command, could never get her supply of pomade replenished. Again the cattle of the Dinka are not provided with salt in any form whatever, which may in a measure account for the degenerating; it may explain the prevalence, all but universal, of the worms known as “kyatt,” which cover the first stomach or paunch, of nearly all their cattle. These worms in Europe are included in the genus of the Amphistoma; they are like an oval bag, something under half an inch long, and generally as red as port wine. [Illustration: “Kyatt” Worm.] The sheep and he-goats that are left are quite devoid of fat; their flesh when it is cooked has an odious soapy flavour, and is altogether more repulsive than the rankest roast antelope.