334 MR. C. BODEN KLOSS ON 
In 1916 I again spent some local leave in Siam, arriving in 
Bangkok at the end of September with three Dyak assistants by 
whose aid 340 specimens of mammals, 420 of birds* and smaller 
series of reptiles and batrachians were obtained in about thirty- 
three days of collecting. 
At Bangkok I was told I had arrived at about the worst 
time possible for collecting, since near the end of the year the rains 
are at their worst, the low-lying parts of the country flooded and the 
streams and rivers much swollen. This, indeed, I found to be the 
case ; we were everywhere stopped by floods ; and instead of collecting 
at chosen localities we had to work at places where one finally 
starts for these. We were hardly in forest at any time, and owing 
to the fact that the state of the country made it almost impossible 
for us to reach good collecting-ground in the districts I visited, if we 
were to do any collecting at all in the time available, the results are 
much smaller than perhaps they would have been in more favourable 
circumstances. When I left Siam towards the end of November, 
conditions had begun to improve rapidly: it was the time when our 
visit should have commenced. 
I first spent a night at Lopburi to get hares, and arrived at 
Korat on September 30th, with the intention of travelling eastward 
down the Nam Mun towards Ubon, but could not get to the river 
because the intervening country was flooded to a depth greater than 
the height of the floor of our bullock-carts. We therefore started south- 
eastwards towards the mountains, where good forest was reported 
three or four days away, for I hoped we should travel over rising 
ground in that direction; but on the second day progress was stopped 
by wide and deep inundations. As the country through which we 
passed was covered with scrub, bamboo, or open jungle, in which we 
saw scarcely any signs of mammals or birds, there was no induce- 
ment to nake a camp; so we returned immediately to Korat. It 
was impossible not to admire the way in which the Siamese “kwien” 
(a bullock-cart built without a scrap of metal of any sort ) negotiat- 
ed the floods and the, in many places, appalling tracks through the 
its Vide Ibis. 1918, January, pp. 76-114; April, pp. 189-234. 
JOURN. NAT, HIST. SOC, SIAM. 
