Chapter XXIV: Part 2: of Table (6)

[53] The time occupied in the transmission of letters has, since the above was written, been much curtailed, owing to the establishment, through missionary enterprise, of direct postal communication between Bamangwato and the Cape.

[54] In June the following year, this man was seen by Mr. Gilchrist--whose journey into the interior is related in the concluding chapter of this narrative--living near Rustenberg, in the Transvaal, apparently in perfect health.

[55] The woodcut opposite illustrates two of the whydah-finches, which the traveller collected during his present stay at Tati. The general colour of the upper bird is black, with a collar of ruddy brown, fading into buff beneath; that of the lower one black and pale yellow, the bill and legs coral-red. In the winter season these birds lose their long tail feathers, and their plumage becomes a mottled brown; a great contrast to their striking summer dress. There are many varieties of these finches, one species of which (_Chera progne_), a native of the Transvaal, suffers serious inconvenience from these adornments in a high wind. The long tail feathers are much used by the natives for ornaments and head-dresses.

[56] The skulls and other remains here obtained were brought to England, with the rest of the traveller’s collections, after his decease, and form the subject of the interesting paper kindly contributed to the Appendix of this volume by Professor Rolleston, for whom they were collected.

[57] An arid ridge or zone of sand, of frequent occurrence in this district, extending sometimes a distance of many miles.

[58] This was a native from the Cape, named John Mackenna, who, as well as Klaas the driver, remained with Frank Oates till his death.

[59] This letter was not received in England.

[60] _Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi_, p. 254.

[61] _Travels in the Interior of South Africa_, vol. ii., p. 130.

[62] _Explorations in South-West Africa_, p. 499.

[63] Dr. Bradshaw, since the above was written, has been down from the interior to the Cape, with considerable collections of birds and insects formed during his travels. Some of the former of these have reached the British Museum, and are alluded to by Mr. Sharpe in the Appendix to this volume.

[64] Mr. Gilchrist, whose subsequent journey into the interior is related below, and who brought the particulars of this and other incidents connected with the narrative to England, understood the dog to have gone back to his master’s grave the whole way from the Tati settlement--a distance of nearly eighty miles.

[65] By a singular coincidence, Frank Oates’s devoted favourite, “Rail”--for four years after reaching England the valued companion of his late master’s relatives--died on the 5th of February 1880, the fifth anniversary of his master’s death, followed but three weeks later by his companion, “Rock.”

[66] See his two Reports concerning his Researches into the Bushman Language and Customs and Folklore, presented to both Houses of Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope, by command of his Excellency the Governor, 1873 and 1875, and _Journal Anthrop. Inst._ 1871.

[67] Perhaps intended for Eland’s Been, near Schietfontein, in the District of Carnarvon, Cape Colony.--Ed.

[68] For the relation of the alisphenoid, squamous, and frontal, see Broca, _Instructions Craniologiques_, pp. 26, 27, 1875; and Gruber, _Ueber die Verbindung der Schläfenbeinschuppe mit dem Stirnbein. Mém. de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de St. Pétersbourg_, tom. xxi. No. 5, 1874. Hermann Schlocker, _Ueber die Anomalieen des Pterion;_ Inaugural Dissertation Zum. Univ. Dorpat. 1879.

It is right, however, to add that the skull of the Bushwoman whose brain Professor Marshall has described, _l.c._, had the squamous of the left side joined to the frontal, and that with obliteration of the suture; and that though Dr. Williamson has not recorded the presence of this junction in any of the three Bushman crania described by him in his _Catalogue of the Army Medical Museum_, 1867, he has noted it in two out of the seven skulls of the closely affined Hottentot race.

[69] Similarly rudimentary sutures are observable in several of the Bushman crania in the Royal College of Surgeons of London.

[70] It may be well here to give the literature of “Os (Malare) bipartitum.”

1779. E. Sandifort, _Observat. Anat. Path._, Lib. iii. 113; Tab. viii. fig. 7.

1837. _Leçons d’Anatomie Comparée_, par Georges Cuvier et M. Duméril. Seconde édition, par F. G. Cuvier et Laurillard. Tome ii. 1837, p. 381.

1844. Breschet, _Ann. Sciences Nat., 3 ser., Zoologie._ Tome i. p. 30.

1852. Schultz in _Bemerkungen über den Bau der normalen Menschen Schädel_, p. 57, Tab. ii.

1867. Canestrini, _Annuario della Soc. del Naturalisti in Modena_, 1867, p. 83. _Gazzetta della Cliniche_, Torino, 1871. G. Delorenzie’s _Tre nuove case d’anomalia dell’ osso Malare_, Torino, 1872. E. Marselli, _Sopra una rara anomalia dell’ osso Malare_, Modena, 1872.

1873. Gruber, _Monographie des zweigetheilten Jochbeines bei Menschen und Säugethieren_, _Archiv. Anat. und Physiologie_, p. 337.

1874. Gruber, _Ann. Sci. Nat., 3 ser., Zoologie_, Tome i. p. 30.

1878. _Human Osteology_, Holden and Doran, p. 99.

Laurillard’s words from Cuvier’s _Anatomie Compareé_, vol. ii. pp. 381, 2, are specially worthy of being quoted, as they were published so long ago as 1837. They are as follows:--

“Au bord inférieur du jugal nous avons trouvé sur deux sujets un os particulier, alongé et aplati, étendu tout le long du bord inférieur du jugal, et d’articulant en avant avec l’extremité très saillante de l’apophyse malaire du maxillaire et en arrière avec l’apophyse zygomatique du temporal, laquelle se trouve ainsi présenter deux sutures, l’une verticale avec le jugal proprement dit, l’autre horizontale avec ce second jugal et faisant un angle presque droit avec la précédente. Dans les sujets ou nous l’avons rencontré, la forme de ce nouvel os, des connexions avec les os voisins, sa proportion avec l’os malaire proprement dit, étaient les mêmes et comme nous l’avons trouvé, ainsi que nous le dirons plus loin, dans certaines espèces de singes une subdivision parfaitement semblable, nous sommes portés à la considérer autrement que comme une disposition purement accidentelle.”

[71] See Cleland, _Phil. Trans._ 1870, p. 163.

[72] _British Barrows_, pp. 563 and 677.

[73] Many references to the older literature treating of the two peculiarities mentioned will be found in Waltz’s _Anthropologie_, Th. i. pp. 120–122, 1859. An important note regarding the latter of the two is given by a man of science residing at the Cape of Good Hope in Professor Flower and Dr. Murie’s “Account of the Dissection of a Bushwoman,” _Journal of Anatomy and Physiology_, No. II. May 1867, p. 208.

[74] For this see Hartmann, _Die Nigritier_, 1876, p. 492, who cites Schweinfurth, _Heart of Africa_, Eng. tran., vol. ii. chap. xvi., Du Chaillu, and the Rev. J. G. Wood, _Natural History of Man_. Africa, p. 538, 1868.

[75] The point of similarity is not, I apprehend, in the character of the music so much as in the fact that the compared peoples admire it such as it is. Of the Kalmuck music Pallas writes (and, as the work is little accessible, I quote) as follows, _Sammlungen Historischer Nachrichten über die Mongolischen Völkerschaften_, i. p. 152--“Die Melodie der Kalmücken, besonders ihre zärtliche und verliebte Musik, hat solche langgezerte klagliche Töne und solche Dissonanzen, dass sie ein gutgewohntes Ohr mit noch fast mehr Widerwillen als alte Französische Musik, anhört!”

[76] Mr. W. F. Kirby has injudiciously sunk Boisduval’s generic name for this group, containing 33 species, and adopted in its stead one of Hübner’s four sub-generic names (into which he had divided them), which only comprised four of the species.

[77] The name of this species is accidentally omitted in the classified index of the second series of Swainson’s “Illustrations;” and Mr. Trimen complains that the plate is not in the copy of the work in the Public Library at Cape Town, having been probably omitted by the binder from not appearing in the classified index.

[78] The plants collected by Mr. Oates in South-East Africa have been named at Kew under the direction of Professor Oliver; the two novelties having been described by Mr. J. G. Baker, F.R.S. Those plants which are distinguished by an asterisk * were obtained between Pietermaritzburg and the Crocodile River; the rest all in Matabele Land.--Ed.

Transcriber’s Notes:

1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.

2. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.

3. Superscripts are represented using the caret character, e.g. D^r. or X^{xx}.

4. Italics are shown as _xxx_.

5. Bold print is shown as =xxx=.