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BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
estate we are not troubled with these pests so far as I know, but Thomas, of Blantyre, 
who lives near here, after building a very nice house has been awfully troubled with the 
white ants, who in a few nights would build up a huge ant-hill in the middle of the 
drawing-room, if he was away and the house shut up. They also came up under his 
bed and broke out all through the walls. The result was he had to take up his carefully 
laid floors, and dig and dig and dig, until he rooted out at least three separate nests. In 
one case he was obliged to tunnel down something like ten feet before he found the 
queen ; and until you have found and extirpated the queens your work has been for 
nothing, for if you fill up the hole the white ant community soon gets to rights again 
and recommences operations. The worst of it is, you never know whether there may 
not be more than one queen in the nest and whether you have destroyed them all ! 
NATIVES MAKING BRICKS 
“ In front of my house I intend to have a small terrace, which I shall plant in an 
■orderly way with flower beds. Last month I ran over to Zomba for a visit and stayed 
with one of the officials of the Administration, and there I saw old W-who is in 
charge of the Botanical Gardens, who has given me lots of flower seeds, and promised 
me any amount of plants and strawberries, as soon as my garden is ready to receive 
them. W- is giving away strawberry plants to everyone and I wonder that they are 
not more run after as those planted at Zomba produce excellent crops year after year, 
the fruit season lasting about five months They are not large strawberries like those at 
home, but a small Alpine kind. Yet they are very fragrant and very sweet. 
“ Down in the lower country near Lake Chilwa, you see a most extraordinary 
Euphorbia growing, which I am afraid most of the planters call “cactuses.” 1 These are 
both quaint and ornamental, and I am going to plant some of them along the bottom of 
my garden. In the centre of my flower beds I shall put wild date palms, rvhich grow 
in the stream-valleys, and at each corner of the terrace there shall be a raphia palm. 
1 There are no cacti in Africa, except the Opuntia (prickly pear) introduced from America into North 
and South Africa.—H. H. J. 
