Page:Seven Years in South Africa v1.djvu/46

 furnish a fine field for the ornithologist’s enjoyment, as they abound in plovers, sandpipers, and other birds. I observed, also, several species of flowers that were new to me, particularly some aloes, marigolds, and ranunculuses, and a fleshy kind of convolvulus, which, I think, has not been seen elsewhere.

Generally I returned home by way of the salt-pan, a small salt lake about 500 yards long by 200 broad, which lies between the town and the river, and is for part of the year full of water. Here I found some more new flowers, besides some beetles and butterflies. The salt-pan lies in in a grassy plain, bounded on the west by the slope on which the town is built. Both the plain and the rocky declivity produce a variety of plants, but the majority of them are of quite a dwarf growth; in August and September, the spring months, they abound in lizards, spiders, and scorpions, and of these I secured a large collection. On the slope alone I caught as many as thirty-four snakes. Just at this season, when the winter is departing, the beetles and reptiles begin to emerge from their holes; but, finding the nights and mornings still cold, they are driven by their instinct to take refuge under large stones. Here they will continue sometimes for a week or more in a state of semi-vitality; and, captured in this condition, they may easily be transferred to a bottle of spirits of wine without injury to the specimens.

My inland excursions, which for the most part took the direction of the valley of Baker River, had