266 THE ODYSSEY OF AN ANIMAL COLLECTOR 
unless the fishermen are caught without warning in a very rough 
sea, which may happen from time to time. Any such disaster due 
to the elements, which we should look upon merely as bad luck 
is, in the eyes of the Malagasy, brought about by some evil in- 
fluence. Hence the origin of lucky days, whether it be for fishing, 
hunting wild boar, or even planting rice. 
During the fishless period at Manombo the weather was per- 
fect and the sea calm, but not a single craft put out. After a fort- 
night of this the great day arrived, and almost the entire popula- 
tion made its way rejoicing to the sea, with thoughts of the com- 
ing evening when they would all be feasting on fish. But someone 
must have offended the ancestral spirits. A gale sprang up and 
the sea became violently rough so that fishing was out of the 
question. It was late afternoon when the dejected-looking crowd 
returned without a single fish. So much for lucky days! 
Rather disappointingly my collecting here brought forth no new 
discoveries, but enabled me to get a good series of the small mam- 
mals I had collected elsewhere in the eastern forests, thus throw- 
ing light on their distribution and local variation. 
Madagascar has some interesting mongooses, and in this locality 
the Graceful Mongoose was not uncommon. It is not popular with 
the natives as they say that it takes great toll of their chickens. 
They trap them occasionally in snares set on foothpaths leading 
from the forest, along which the mongooses love to run at night 
in preference to threading their way through coarse tufts of grass. 
When setting snares for these animals in the forest, the Antaifasy 
make a small fire of sticks and leaves nearby. They maintain 
that any mongoose smelling the ashes will come to investigate, as 
it will think that travelers have halted there in order to cook a 
meal, and may have left behind some scraps of food. This is a 
pretty story and is an example of the many simple native beliefs, 
passed on from father to son, in which there is no substance in 
fact. 
It occurred to me that in all probability the western forests 
would produce some interesting material if a systematic search 
were carried out. The fact that so little was known about the 
Giant Rat was a sure indication that little had been done on that 
