Answer the following questions briefly.
1. What prejudice has vitiated the reasoning of geologists?
2. Why does Dr Smith refer to Africa as a sterile country?
3. What is the ‘carnage’ referred to by Dr Smith?
4. What does Darwin’s remark, ‘if there were sufficient data’ indicate?
5. To account for the ‘surprising’ number of animals in a ‘country producing so little food’, what
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Answers
Answer:
1. That large animals require luxuriant vegetation has been a general assumption which has passed from one work to another, but I do not hesitate to say that it is completely false and that it has vitiated the reasoning of geologists on some points of great interest in the ancient history of the world. The prejudice has probably been derived from India, and the Indian islands, where troops of elephants, noble forests, and impenetrable jungles, are associated together in everyone’s mind. If, however, we refer to any work of travels through the southern parts of Africa, we shall find allusions in almost every page either to the desert character of the country or to the numbers of large animals inhabiting it. The same thing is rendered evident by the many engravings which have been published of various parts of the interior.
2. Dr Andrew Smith, who has lately succeeded in passing the Tropic of Capricorn, informs me that, taking into consideration the whole of the southern part of Africa, there can be no doubt of its being a sterile country. On the southern coasts, there are some fine forests, but with these exceptions, the traveller may pass for days together through open plains, covered by poor and scanty vegetation. Now, if we look to the animals inhabiting these wide plains, we shall find their numbers extraordinarily great, and their bulk immense.
3. It may be supposed that although the species are numerous, the individuals of each kind are few. By the kindness of Dr Smith, I am enabled to show that the case is very different. He informs me, that in lat. 24′, in one day’s march with the bullock-wagons, he saw, without wandering to any great distance on either side, between one hundred and one hundred and fifty rhinoceroses – the same day he saw several herds of giraffes, amounting together to nearly a hundred.
4. At the distance of a little more than one hour’s march from their place of encampment on the previous night, his party actually killed at one spot eight hippopotamuses and saw many more. In this same river, there were likewise crocodiles. Of course, it was a case quite extraordinary, to see so many great 12 2 animals crowded together, but it evidently proves that they must exist in great numbers. Dr Smith describes the country passed through that day, as ‘being thinly covered with grass, and bushes about four feet high, and still more thinly with mimosa-trees.’
5. Besides these large animals, anyone the least acquainted with the natural history of the Cape has read of the herds of antelopes, which can be compared only with the flocks of migratory birds. The numbers indeed of the lion, panther, and hyena, and the multitude of birds of prey, plainly speak of the abundance of the smaller quadrupeds: one evening seven lions were counted at the same time prowling round Dr Smith’s encampment. As this able naturalist remarked to me, the carnage each day in Southern Africa must indeed be terrific! I confess it is truly surprising how such a number of animals can find support in a country producing so little food.
has properly been derived from India and the India and the island where troops of elephant Nobel forests and impenetrable jungles are associated together in everyone's mind