inevitable "Peruvian"[1] or Russian Jew, whose inferior liquors, with the illustration of drunken Kafirs around the establishment, proved once more that, with few exceptions, these people should never be entrusted with a licence. The best law passed by the Transvaal Government of recent years, and, to their credit be it said, in the face of great opposition by some of their interested and selfish supporters, is one which now prohibits the sale of intoxicants to natives, entirely necessitated by the vile compounds supplied to the Kafirs at the mines. However, by pushing on we reached another roadside house kept by an English Colonial and a Dane, and there we passed the night.
This thickly wooded spot, in the vicinity of a well-known Nek, is an excellent halt for the ornithologist. It was here I first met with the African Grey Hornbill, Tockus nasutus, a bird, strange to say, which became rather common in the gardens of Pretoria during the winter months of 1896. Hornbills are not averse to human habitations, and I had brought to me the yellow- and red-billed species, Lophoceros leucomelas and L. erythrorynchus, both killed in town gardens.
Although the season had been abnormally dry, we now found many boggy and loose sandy tracks, to avoid which loop ways had been made through the trees, though these were often little better than the discarded road. In these sandy tracks I found the Cicindelid beetle, Manticora tuberculata, and later on I was able to add to the list of its victims a small member of the Cicadidæ, Callipsaltria longula, which I extracted from its closed mandibles. It is often thought and frequently stated that the Cicadas are a highly protected group, owing to their generally assimilative hue, when at rest, to the twigs or boughs which they frequent, and certainly some species are difficult to detect. But any concealment thus acquired is more than negatived by the stridulation of the males, and protective resemblance can scarcely be a factor in the insect's existence when by its piercing notes it proclaims the place of its concealment. In collecting I was usually apprised of their whereabouts by their stridulating music, and the difficulty I experienced in finding them among the bush would improbably be felt by birds. As if aware of the danger they incur by
- ↑ S. African corruption of a local European name for these people.
