The area covered by this work is the Union of South Africa, Bechuanaland, Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, South-West Africa, Portuguese East Africa (sometimes referred to as Mozambique, though we reserve this term for the province itself), and Angola (but not including the Portuguese territory of Kabinda, which lies north of the River Congo) . These limits are, we realize, artificial and, having dealt with southern Africa the ideal would have been to go on and deal with the whole of the Ethiopian region. But the Belgian Congo has been adequately dealt with by Schouteden, 1944-6, De zoogdieren van Belgisch-Congo en van Ruanda-Urundi, Am. Mus. Congo Beige , Zoologie, 3: 1-576, and Tanganyika Territory has been well listed by Swynnerton and Hay man, 1951, A checklist of the land mammals of the Tanganyika Territory and the Zanzibar Protectorate, J.E. Afr. Nat. Hist. Soc. 20: 274-392. And in general our reason for not extending our work to the north of these areas has been lack of opportunity.