BRITISH CAMEROONS 333 
crackers and Blue-billed Malimbus—all inhabitants of the forests. 
The only birds brought to me by a native were some newly 
hatched Sclater’s Crested Guinea-fowl. These were mere balls of 
fluff and had been carried for many miles in the native’s hat. They 
had the instinctive habit of most, if not all, wild gallinaceous 
chicks, of dispersing rapidly and hiding under cover when danger 
threatened, and when two slipped out of my hand I had a busy 
five minutes with the aid of my staff before recovering them. How- 
ever, in a few days they became fairly tame on being given live 
termites to eat. To bring in these and to catch grasshoppers I 
engaged a young native boy. His enthusiasm was unbounded the 
first day, but he quickly tired of chasing grasshoppers and after 
a few days his daily catch dropped to a number that anyone could 
have captured in half an hour. It was obvious that the native boys 
here disliked regular work, for I was unable to find anyone whose 
enthusiasm extended beyond a few days. 
Several of the guinea-fowl chicks succumbed after I had had 
them about a fortnight and a native told me that it was due to 
allowing them to eat soldier termites, which have diabolical 
tweezer-like mandibles with which they cling tenaciously to any 
enemy and remain so even if their bodies are torn from their 
heads. The native said that there was a heavy mortality among 
the young native chickens whenever they have access to a broken 
termites’ nest. The older birds avoid the soldier ants and eat 
mainly the nymphs. To overcome this I got my boy to break the 
mud nest on to a metal tray and to kill all the soldiers by squash- 
ing them one by one with the handle of a teaspoon. This became a 
routine performance every time I wanted any of my insectivorous 
birds to have some live food. 
As collecting was proceeding rather slowly at Ayang, I made my 
way by lorry to the town of Mamfe, which is an important center 
for the export of the produce of the interior owing to its connec- 
tion by river with the port of Calabar. Here I was given permis- 
sion to stay in the rest-house belonging to the United Africa 
Company. This was a corrugated-iron-roofed building and the 
shade temperature on the veranda between noon and 3 p.m. rarely 
dropped below 95°F.; when, later in the day, it fell to 85°F., it 
seemed delightfully cool by contrast. The bank of the Cross River 
