Peacocks are brought, as in the days of the Ophir trade, from Cutch. Madagascar sends hard, tasteless geese and common ducks, and Mozambique supplies turkeys which are here eaten by Arabs. A local superstition prevents pigeon-breeding in the house: the birds are found wild on the opposite coast, but Moslems will not use them as food. The Muscovy duck, an aborigine of the Platine Valley, has of late years been naturalized— it is a favourite with Africans, who delight in food which gives their teeth and masticatory apparatus the hardest and the longest labour. The only gallinaceous bird which Africa has contributed to civilization, the Guinea-hen, here called the ‘Abyssinian cock,’ is trapped by slaves upon the mainland, and is brought to the Island for sale. As might be expected so near their mother-country, there are seven or eight varieties of this valuable fowl, and until late years some of the rarest and the most curious have been unwittingly used for the table. In every part of the Arab world the Guinea-fowl has a different name: in Syria, for instance, it is called Dik el Rumi (not Dik el Habash) or Roman (Greek) cock, a term generally given to the turkey. It is curious on a coast of estuaries and great river-mouths that the flamingo was not seen by us. SECTION 5. Notes on the Flora of Zanzibar. The prosperity of Zanzibar, the Island, has hitherto depended upon the cocoa and the clove-tree. The former grows in a broad band around the shore: on the Continent it follows the streams as far as 60 miles inland. In Zanzibar the Arab saying that ‘cocoa and date cannot co- exist,’ is literally correct; near Mombasah town, however, there is a fruit-bearing phœnix, and on the promontory, fronting the fort, there is a plantation of small stunted trees. Everywhere on the Pangani river we found the ‘brab,’ a wild phœnix, as the word derived from the Portuguese ‘brabo,’ corrupted from ‘bravo,’ or rather in the feminine (palma) ‘brava,’ suggests; and it would appear that the cultivated variety might be induced to thrive. The country was almost denuded of the cocoa to make room for cloves, when the late Sayyid threatened confiscation to those who did not plant in proportion of one to three. There are now (1857) extensive nurseries in the Máshámbá (plantations), and as this palm bears after six or seven years, it soon recovered its normal status. Many trees are prostrated by gusts and tornados: the Hindus replant them by digging a hole, and hauling up the bole with ropes made fast to the neighbouring stems—this simple contrivance is here unknown.