As the Bushmen learnt to understand our Hottentot a little better, we had some long talks about the animals on the river that joins the western end of the lake; that there are many there quite new to the Hottentots is beyond doubt, as several carosses were stolen by the Kubabees and brought back south, and the skins that many of these were made from were quite unknown to them. The Bushmen, without any leading question or previous talk upon the subject, mentioned the unicorn. I cross-questioned them thoroughly, but they persisted in describing a one-horned animal, something like a gemsbok in shape and size, whose horn was in the middle of its forehead, and pointed forwards. The spoor of the animal was, they said, like that of a zebra. The horn was in shape like a gemsbok’s, but shorter. They spoke of the animal as though they knew of it, but were not at all familiar with it. It will indeed be strange if, after all, the creature has a real existence. There are recent travellers in the north of tropical Africa who have heard of it there, and believe in it, and there is surely plenty of room to find something new in the vast belt of _terra incognita_ that lies in this continent. Of another fabulous monster, the cockatrice, a most widely spread belief exists. The Ovampo, the Bushmen of this place, and Timboo, all protested that there is such a creature, and that they had often seen it. They described it as a snake, sometimes twelve feet long, and as thick as the arm; slender for its length, with a brilliantly variegated skin; it has a comb on the head exactly like a guinea-fowl, but red, and has also wattles; its cry is very like the noise that fowls make when roosting—I do not mean crowing, but a subdued chucking; its bite is highly venomous, and it is a tree snake. I heard an instance of ten cows having been bitten one after the other; they said that sometimes people when on their way home at night hear a chucking in the tree, and think that their fowls have strayed, and as they are peering about under the branches to see where they are, the snake darts down upon them and bites them. It appears to be a particularly vicious snake. I have generally heard it called “hangara.” I never heard of its possessing wings. Since my return I have had my attention directed to a recent book, Mr. Gosse’s “Notes of a Naturalist in Jamaica,” in which he mentions the prevalence of the same belief there, and relates several reported facts relative to the creature. In the Penny Cyclopædia, under the head cockatrice, many old drawings of these snakes are reproduced, and are worth looking at; they differ much in character from one another, and seem to have been derived from different originals. I can give no clue to the fable of the cockatrice’s eggs.