158 THE ODYSSEY OF AN ANIMAL COLLECTOR 
keen to get a number as they are exquisite birds and had never 
been introduced alive to England. The marked similarity of the 
two species caused the natives to regard them as one and the same, 
the slight difference, in their view, denoting the sexes. To make 
it more confusing, both kinds were often to be seen in the same 
flock. 
There was such an abundance of natural food in the way of 
grass-seed that they were not attracted by any form of bait, so I 
knew that trapping them on my own in that sticky heat was going 
to be a slow laborious business; but I hit on an idea to speed 
things up and allow me time to get on with something else. First 
of all I captured two of each species, and a few other small birds 
common in native plantations. Then I approached the local school- 
master, asking him if he would announce in school that I would 
pay a reward for certain birds brought to me, alive and in an 
uninjured condition. I promised to show any boy the birds I had 
already captured so that he could see what I specially wanted. He 
not only fell in with this idea but brought the whole school along 
to my bird-room, where the boys filed past the cages, while I 
explained my requirements and impressed upon them that on no 
account must the birds be injured. 
This idea worked much better than I had ever expected, as some 
of the more alert youngsters proved to be quite clever at trapping 
with their ingenious home-made traps. Besides the species asked 
for, they occasionally brought in something rare, so it was quite 
exciting examining the contents of their baskets when they arrived. 
Nearly all the boys spoke French fairly well as this was the official 
language of the schools; in fact it is the practice in all French 
possessions to change the native at an early age into a young 
Frenchman and to alienate him from the wilder elements of his 
own kind. The great objection to this idea seems to me to be that 
once a native learns to speak a European language, he will no 
longer do any manual labor. He immediately wants an office job, 
and is the first to exploit his own kind. Outside a French-speaking 
black gentleman’s hut one may see the legend Ecrivain public, 
which means that he is prepared to act on behalf of the non- 
French-speaking fraternity in their affairs with the government 
over such matters as taxes, etc. This is a highly lucrative business, 
