Captive children are often sold, but not by their mothers. Famine
sometimes reduces fathers to part with them, but the selling of
children, as a general practice, is quite unknown, and, as Speke put it,
quite a mistake.

_25th and 26th May, 1872._--Cold weather. Lewale sends for all Arabs to
make a grand assault, as it is now believed that Mirambo is dead, and
only his son, with few people, remains.

Two Whydah birds, after their nest was destroyed several times, now try
again in another pomegranate-tree in the yard. They put back their eggs,
as they have the power to do, and build again.

The trout has the power of keeping back the ova when circumstances are
unfavourable to their deposit. She can quite absorb the whole, but
occasionally the absorbents have too much to do; the ovarium, and
eventually the whole abdomen, seems in a state of inflammation, as when
they are trying to remove a mortified human limb; and the poor fish,
feeling its strength leaving it, true to instinct, goes to the entrance
to the burn where it ought to have spawned, and, unable to ascend, dies.
The defect is probably the want of the aid of a milter.

_27th May, 1872._--Another pair of the kind (in which the cock is
redbreasted) had ten chickens, also rebuilds afresh. The red cock-bird
feeds all the brood. Each little one puts his head on one side as he
inserts his bill, chirruping briskly, and bothering him. The young ones
lift up a feather as a child would a doll, and invite others to do the
same, in play. So, too, with another pair. The cock skips from side to
side with a feather in his bill, and the hen is pleased: nature is full
of enjoyment. Near Kasanganga's I saw boys shooting locusts that settled
on the ground with little bows and arrows.

Cock Whydah bird died in the night. The brood came and chirruped to it
for food, and tried to make it feed them, as if not knowing death!

A wagtail dam refused its young a caterpillar till it had been
killed--she ran away from it, but then gave it when ready to be
swallowed. The first smile of an infant with its toothless gums is one
of the pleasantest sights in nature. It is innocence claiming kinship,
and asking to be loved in its helplessness.

_28th May, 1872._--Many parts of this interior land present most
inviting prospects for well-sustained efforts of private benevolence.
Karague, for instance, with its intelligent friendly chief Rumainyika
(Speke's Rumanika), and Bouganda, with its t