6 Wild Life in Central Africa. 



until an article has already suffered a certain amount of 

 damage, and most of my belongings bear the marks of rats' 

 teeth, or pieces eaten out of slings and bags by white ants. 

 It is worth mentioning that neither rats nor white ants care 

 to eat green Willesden canvas, such as tents and guncases 

 are made of, and this is a much better material than leather 

 or brown canvas for the tropics. When bees make up 

 their mind to hive they can prove a great nuisance, and I 

 once lost over ten fowls which were stung to death by a 

 swarm. Eventually, they settled in a brick chimney (I was 

 then living in a brick house in Zomba), and in the evening I 

 smoked them out and they dropped into my bedroom by 

 the hundred, which I discovered later when I went to 

 bed, for many were only dazed and stupefied with the smoke, 

 and they soon woke up and began to crawl about. 



Black ants are bad biters, and I was seldom more 

 amused than when an officer of the King's African Rifles in 

 Zomba, who apparently had never had any previous 

 knowledge of their ways, stood over a line of the " warriors " 

 until many of them had -climbed up the legs of his pants. 

 Then he jumped and rushed into his house and undressed 

 quicker than I ever saw a man do before. His " boys " 

 and I then helped to unload him, which was a difficult 

 business, as he was unable to stand still for long. These 

 ants have very strong mandibles, and if a man were too 

 sick to move, or tied up, a swarm would soon kill him. 

 I have had several ducks and fowls killed by them, and 

 once they nearly killed a calf which they had attacked. 



Lately, a swarm of fleas appeared at my camp and settled 

 on the ducks and fowls, and the birds' necks and heads got 

 covered with them. They were so numerous that they 

 resembled fine bead work. In three months I had lost nine 

 ducks and about a dozen fowls, when I tried to kill the fleas 

 by rubbing on various strong solutions of corrosive sublimate, 

 permanganate of potash, or boracic acid ; and on one duck 

 I tried a rubbing of paraffin oil, which quickly killed the 

 fleas; but it killed the duck also, for it gave a few shivers 

 and expired. I fancy that when the fleas felt the oil, in 



