BRITISH CAMEROONS 345 
logged trails. This did not bother me at the time, but it had a 
painful aftermath. 
My departure from here was delayed several weeks by a night 
attack by driver ants, during which a number of my birds were 
killed, and these I had to try to replace. Fortunately, the main 
attack was not near the picathartes, so he remained unharmed. 
The ants had arrived in millions in the dead of night without 
causing any alarm among the birds. I was sleeping nearby and 
never heard a sound. The birds seemed to know instinctively that 
they were about to be overwhelmed by a ruthless enemy, and 
gave in without struggle or sound. 
At the first sign of daybreak I rose and walked on to the 
veranda in my pajamas. All was silent, but in the faint light I saw 
what looked like a black carpet stretching from the veranda posts 
to the row of cages. The significance of it all came as a dreadful 
shock, but I knew that every second might mean the saving of a 
bird’s life. To break up the organized attack I slashed at the main 
stream of ants with a sack. I then shook the cages violently and 
carried them one by one to the opposite end of the veranda. 
While doing this I was covered from head to foot with biting 
ants. I had already called the boys, who lit fires round the feet 
of the veranda posts to disorganize the invading army. By quickly 
catching each individual bird, brushing off the ants, and then 
dropping the empty cage so that the shock would make the rest 
of the ants quit, I saved the majority of the birds, but in fifteen 
minutes all would have been lost. 
Having eventually rid the veranda of ants, we attacked the 
millions that covered a wide area down below. Much as one 
hates these ruthless killers one cannot but marvel at their organiza- 
tion both in attack and retreat. Although many thousands 
perished in the flames and great gaps were made in their ranks, 
the remnants were quickly marshaled by their sergeant-majors 
into lines which all converged on to a single column, and in an 
amazingly short space of time the army was traveling in orderly 
retreat as though there had been no engagement. 
When this was over I was exhausted, for one has to fight hard 
to overcome the fantastic numbers of such an invading army. 
As my luck seemed to be out on this trip, I was not surprised to 
