76 DAYS AND NIGHTS OF SHIKAR 



they seem to thrive on Scrubbs's ammonia, vaseline 

 and soap. I counted three hundred of them one 

 day on my arm between wrist and elbow. The 

 irritation is unendurable, especially at night, and 

 one tosses and rolls about, and scratches continuously. 

 They sometimes become poisonous, and a friend of 

 ours was once sent home on sick leave owing to their 

 bites. They infest bison, and sometimes leopards, 

 in Kanara. 



The first time that I went out to Atli I was unpre- 

 pared for these pests, but the next time I wore 

 " next to nothings " that I had invented myself 

 and which I think I ought to patent. The garment 

 was an oblong bag, slit up below into two bags, 

 literal bags, for my legs, loose enough for me to move 

 in them. It had sleeves and was made of one piece 

 of very thin silk so that it went under everything, 

 socks included. It tied round the neck and wrists 

 like a bag, and, to make the ticks dislike me more, 

 I rubbed kerosene oil and tobacco juice on my neck 

 and wrists. No trouble was too great to take, no 

 evil smell too strong to endure in order to keep off 

 these insects, whose ravages lasted, I found, for at 

 least three weeks and sometimes for three months. 

 It was a great satisfaction to me, when I got back 

 from shooting and pulled my clothes off, to see 

 hundreds of ticks wandering about outside my bug- 

 proof bag, unable to find an entrance. I threw all 

 my clothes outside, bag included, and Kundi put 

 them in a bucket of boiling water. 



The next time I went into bison jungles was after 

 the rains, and then it was the open season for leeches. 



