Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/71

Rh hunted for food by the natives they sometimes roost near the native houses or villages for protection. Their roosts seem to be permanently occupied. We found the specimens we procured had been feeding upon the palm-juice which the natives were collecting for saquir (toddy). The bats visit the trees at night and drink the juice from the cups hung on the trees."

Two new species, Pteropus auri-nuchalis and P. lucifer, are described by Mr. Elliot.

rinderpest, which is devastating South Africa, and has been calculated as liable to destroy ninety-nine per cent. of the domesticated oxen, has prompted the suggestion of more than one remedy. Dr. Stroud, of Pretoria, has now advocated a process of inoculation. He argues that prevention can never be brought about by a system of medication, but, in a specific disease of this terrible nature, can only be effected, either by the wholesale slaughter of the healthy along with the smitten, and so getting rid of all possible contingencies by one radical sweep; or else, by increasing in the sound animal its power of resistance to the invasion of the disease. As the rinderpest is reported to have attacked some of the wild fauna, the difficulties of the course proposed are doubtless increased.

What devastation the rinderpest has created in the Transvaal alone is shown by an extract from the Pretoria 'Press,' November, 1896:—"To quote a single instance, it may be stated that in the ward Boschveld, in the Marico district, there were, before the outbreak, some 30,798 head of oxen. Up to date 4,027 of these have been slaughtered, and 16,808 have died, representing a loss of 20,835 animals; 6,766 are still healthy, 610 are sick; 958 have been salted; 3,229 have been treated by the 'zucht' method; there being thus 9,953 head alive, for those at present sick can hardly be counted."

are still ravaging South Africa. We learn from Durban, under date of last November, that on one morning during that month immense swarms stretched without intermission from Bellair to the Congella Valley, and young mealie fields and vegetable patches in many places were utterly spoiled. Part of a swarm passed over, but did not settle. Swarms were seen on the back beach, and although they were keeping pretty close to the ground, a westerly breeze which prevailed was driving them to the sea rapidly. Numbers of dead locusts, which had been washed up by the waves, were piled up in a line along the beach, and as the breeze freshened during the day the work of destruction increased.

a December meeting of the Croydon Microscopical and Natural History Society, the President, Mr. W.M. Holmes, stated that he had seen