Abstract
THIS is a brightly-written and most interesting sketch of Mr. Drummond's experiences during a recent journey in East Central Africa. He has no very surprising or exciting adventures to describe, but in the course of his narrative, which is written with a vigour and grace unusual in books of travel, he contrives to convey a remarkably vivid impression of the country through which he passed. Going up the valley of the Shiré River, he visited Lake Shirwa, of which little has hitherto been known; then he went on to Lake Nyassa, and to the plateau between Lake Nyassa and Lake Tanganyika. During the whole of his journey he was a close observer, not only of the physical features of the districts he visited, but of the various classes of phenomena which interested him as a geologist, an ethnographer, and a student of natural history. In one admirable chapter he gives a full and striking account of the white ant, which he had frequent opportunities of studying; in another he brings together many curious illustrations of the well-known fact that among numerous species of animals mimicry is one of the means of self-protection. Before going to Africa, Mr. Drummond had mentally resolved not to be taken in by “mimetic frauds,” yet he was “completely stultified and beaten” by the first mimetic form he met. This was an insect—one of the family of the Phasmidæ—exactly like a wisp of hay. Another insect, which he often saw, closely resembles a bird-dropping, and the consequence is that “it lies fearlessly exposed on the bare stones, during the brightest hours of the tropical day, a time when almost every other animal is skulking out of sight.” Mr. Drummond has of course much to say about the chances of a great future for Africa, and in this connection he presents a good deal of valuable information as to the capacity of the natives for work and as to the wrongs inflicted upon them by vile gangs of slave-traders.
Tropical Africa.
By Henry Drummond. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1888.)
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Our Book Shelf . Nature 38, 171 (1888). https://doi.org/10.1038/038171b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/038171b0