MADAGASCAR (III) 249 
mens before setting out again. I was not in the habit of doing field 
work for museums, so the task of skinning, preserving and stufing 
took much longer than I had anticipated. 
However, we were able to stick to our timetable of the previous 
night and were again rewarded, but this time with a single spect- 
men—the only one we saw. Anyway, I counted this as excellent 
progress and decided to continue the good work. The third night 
was a blank, but on the fourth night I obtained my fourth speci- 
men. 
After the first outing I took my camp bed and mosquito net 
with me for comfort, as dozing in the car was not only unrestful 
but became torture on account of the bloodthirsty mosquitoes. I 
had already arranged with the Chief of the village near the ferry 
to let me use a spare hut, and to this I retired and had a good 
sleep around midnight. Sleeping in any hut that has been fre- 
quented by natives, or their fowls or dogs, in a west-coast village 
is a great mistake, but I did not realize this until several days later 
when my toes began to itch. Then I became painfully aware that 
they were harboring a number of jigger fleas that had burrowed 
their way under the skin to lay their eggs. I made no attempt to 
remove them myself, for unless this is done cleanly, festering sores 
arise which are slow in healing. Instead, I gave a needle to my 
driver who, like most natives where jiggers abound, was an expert 
at extricating them with only a tiny puncture of the skin. 
After a few days’ respite at Belo we bade farewell to the genial 
hotel proprietor, once more crossed the ferry, and were then able 
to view the scene of our rat-hunting escapades in daylight, which 
gave me an opportunity to take some photographs. 
After spending the night at Morondava—a west-coast town and 
provincial headquarters—we made our way back eastwards by the 
Morondava-Ambositra road which runs parallel to the Antsirabe- 
Belo road by which we came, about fifty miles to its south. 
I took this route, which passed near the hill-top village and 
ancient fort of Midongy-de-l’Ouest, in an attempt to fulfil the sec- 
ond half of my mission, namely to obtain some specimens of the 
Madagascar Gerbil. History tells us that Monsieur Bastard, the 
French naturalist, discovered a small rodent, new to science, about 
