BRITISH CAMEROONS 341 
ful and intelligent and will thrive on an artificial diet, the pan- 
golin seems more reptilian in character and has no will to live 
under captive conditions. In my attempt to accustom my specimen 
gradually to artificial food I let it loose daily in a tree where there 
were several large ants’ nests so that it could devour a certain 
quantity of its natural food. These ants become very aggressive if 
anything invades their territory and will give a human being an 
uncomfortable time owing to their nasty bites and their great 
numbers. Irritation is caused through the ejection of formic acid, 
which enters the wound. When the pangolin breaks the crust of 
the ants’ nest with its sharp claws it is attacked immediately by 
thousands of ants which swarm over its face and hang on with 
their sharp mandibles like bulldogs. My boy, whose skin was con- 
siderably tougher and less sensitive than mine, had the task of 
scaling the tree and bringing down the pangolin when it had 
finished its meal. When I put the animal back in its box there 
were always numbers of ants still fixed to its face, but after a 
while they were all to be found lying dead on the floor. It seems 
probable that this creature has become so specialized that the 
absorption of a certain amount of formic acid in the blood- 
stream is necessary for its survival, for soon after elimination of 
its natural live food it succumbed in spite of the inclusion of 
large quantities of dead ants in its diet. 
Soon after my arrival at the Mungo River the rains broke. They 
were overdue, but made up for the lost time by continuing almost 
incessantly day and night for the remaining twenty-four days 
that I was there. The humidity was such that clothes and shoes 
became moldy in a couple of days and one’s sheets felt uncom- 
fortably damp. 
As I sat eating my breakfast on the veranda one mere with 
the everlasting rain pouring down, the outlook seemed particu- 
larly gloomy, but just then my houseboy presented himself hold- 
ing a bird which had been brought by one of the native employees 
on the rubber estate. He explained that the boy had caught it and 
wanted to know if I would buy it. The identification of this rain- 
soaked bird with longish neck and slaty-gray upper plumage at 
first glance completely baffled me, so I sprang to my feet to 
examine it more closely, and as I did so was able to see the whole 
