4 A NATURALIST IN CANNIBAL LAND 



obedient to my father's intention) to enter a college; 

 but that intention was never carried out. I managed 

 very artfully to let the holidays drift on month after 

 month, making myself useful to my father in his 

 workroom, always " going to school again next 

 term," but never going. Then finally, after a great 

 deal of persuasion, I was able to induce my father 

 to give up the idea of college life for me, and he allowed 

 me to help him more in his collecting trips, and to be 

 of some assistance in setting insects for his collections. 

 I do not know whether it was with any conscious 

 desire on my part at this time to fit myself for life 

 in savage lands, but I can recall my particular 

 devotion to a gymnasium near by, which I haunted 

 every night, and kept myself thus very fit. To that 

 early love for the gymnasium and the habit I ac- 

 quired there of taking regular exercise, I owe probably 

 my degree of immunity from tropical diseases. 

 Nowadays I get fever very often in the New Guinea 

 swamps. But it does not prostrate me to the same 

 extent as most. When I leave the malaria country 

 I do not take the fever away with me, and to-day 

 I feel vigorous and healthy after some twenty years 

 of the hardest possible life in the jungles and the 

 mountains of tropical Oceania. 



Natural History was not at this time altogether 

 neglected. I was often at the Natural History 

 Museum, Kensington. My father would send me 

 there with specimens of insects to have them named. 



