BORNEAN ARGUS PHEASANT 145 



few times, as if puffing with exertion, and then suddenly spread the miracle of their 

 rainbow wings and scaled smoothly to a distant trunk. A family of wa-was swung 

 past, and a pair of tupaias pursued one another madly across the clearing. Then 

 three paradise flycatchers came out of the jungle, a male in purest white with long 

 sweeping tail plumes, longer in proportion even than those of the Argus itself. 



And now a rustle in the underbrush drew my attention, and I was prepared to see 

 the splendid bird step forth and claim his jungle home, when the fire-ants found me out. 

 These villains work almost wholly at night, and when they discovered my hiding-place 

 it must have seemed some splendid dispensation of the god of ants. Outside was 

 brilliant sunshine, where no fire-ant, true to his traditions, could labour, here a ready- 

 made hollow, dark with the darkness of night, and, wonder of wonders, filled ready to 

 hand with a great store of living food. Three or four scouts located this manna 

 simultaneously and proceeded to take possession of it in approved fire-ant manner. The 

 great sharp jaws take the firmest kind of a bull-dog grip, and close fast, giving a 

 splendid purchase for striking full force with the poisonous sting at the opposite end 

 of the body. I am a trained ornithologist ; to learn a new fact, to ferret out some 

 hidden habit, I would undergo much pain and cramping of body and limb. But I am 

 also a human being, and the coming of the said pain must permit an appreciable amount 

 of anticipation ; must allow at least an instant's bracing with the will, a moment of 

 conscious determination to resist stoically. When one is crouched underground, tense 

 with excitement, with one's whole being concentrated on the external world, and a 

 lighted match is applied simultaneously to several portions of one's neck and body, I 

 doubt if the enthusiast lives who could avoid arising from such a grave without dignity 

 or delay, regardless of aught of scientific interest. And he would indeed have super- 

 human control of his temper, a more than Mohammedan horror of taking life, did he not 

 remove those five ants with little of gentleness and reduce them to forest debris beneath 

 his heel ! This paragraph is not a direct contribution to the ecology of the Argus 

 Pheasant of Borneo, but it is a sidelight on the difficulties which an intruder has to 

 encounter in prying into the privacy of these jungle folk. If the rustle in the underbrush 

 was made by the pheasant I was never to know it. 



I signalled twice, and in a minute or two my small Dyak helper, Sangow, ran up. 

 He is only eight or ten years of age, but all the lore of the jungle is his. He knows 

 scores of birds and animals by name, and has wonderful eyesight, often pointing 

 casually to a flying lizard up on a tree-trunk which both my eyes and glasses refused 

 to detect until the creature takes to flight. He can tell at a glance the difference in the 

 digging of a big varanus lizard and a binturong. A scrap of loin-cloth and two brass 

 ear-rings formed his outfit in life, and his entire body was grey and scaling from a skin 

 disease, not contagious, but none the less loathsome. But the likeable personality of 

 the little fellow soon made me forget the unpleasantness of his epidermis, and we had 

 many tramps together. Only I could never quite overcome the creepy feeling which his 

 sudden appearance produced, popping like a pale, grey wraith or jungle sprite from 

 behind a tree-trunk. Strange little savage! He would never pose in the dancing- 

 ground for a photograph, but later, when I diverted him by spattering his little grey 

 legs with ink from my fountain pen, I gained his confidence and he timidly consented 

 to squat while I took his picture. 



VOL. IV. u 



