182 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
alacrity. I have seen one boy tremble from head to foot, 
absolutely shiver, on catching sight of a snake lying on the 
table. The Museum boy is now quite used to them. At first 
he took me for an ignorant tenderfoot, and went to the pains 
of explaining to me how dreadfully bad snakes were. Now 
he grins when I arrive in the morning with a fresh capture, 
and merely asks whether it is a bad or good one, as he observes 
I treat some with due deference to their abilities. Yesterday 
he was skinning birds, with a live puff adder in a case within 
a foot of him. 
September 8. — Whilst I was skinning a shrike ( Lanius 
humemlis) this evening, a fellow boarder — the occupant of 
the next room — came in to watch. We remarked on what a 
noise the rats were making, pattering about in the wooden 
walls. When my friend, returning to his quarters an hour 
or so later, opened his door, he gave a shout and called me in. 
The air around his electric light was literally alive with a 
dizzy, whirling crowd of what I must call ants for want of a 
better name. I think that is what they are, though they 
measure exactly one inch, two-thirds of which consist of 
tan-coloured abdomen, the segments of which they keep tele- 
scoping as they walk. Across the spread wings they average 
1| inches, and they have large jaws out of proportion. We 
shut the window to prevent reinforcements arriving, and with 
my tweezers I picked them off the curtain and table-cloth 
as fast as they settled ; in this manner I took eighty-four in 
less than ten minutes. Those outside were striking against 
the window-panes like hail ; but the curious thing was that, 
though my window was only six feet away and the ventilator 
wide open, not a single one came in my room. When picked 
up with tweezers they curl their bodies under. 
September 20. — Cycled ten miles out to a Forestry Camp at 
Ngong. Three days before, my host was cycling out along the 
same track in a tropical downpour of rain. After a time the 
road, or rather path, was so bad that he had to fall back on his 
feet for transport. He was resuming his way, having paused 
for a few moments to watch a herd of swine which were rooting 
about and chasing one another close by, when he saw a pair of 
ears moving through the high grass and in a direction which 
