Occasional Notes. 299 
together in the form of an animal apparently more than half- 
human, which he submitted to a puzzled world as a genuine 
animal shot with his own gun ; and thus, by this grotesque 
practical joke, drew down upon himself both the un- 
merited discredit of scientific men for many of his really 
accurate scientific statements and the half-whispered 
accusation from the unscientific part of his audience of 
man-slaughter at least, perhaps of murder. What leads 
me to allude to the di-di now is a curious passage in a 
letter from a friend, an educated man and one who 
knows the wild life of the colony better than any other 
man, unless an Indian, now living ; a man entirely incapable 
of deliberate mis-statement, who half-thinks, half-doubts 
that he has seen a didi ! This man wrote to me on the 
23rd of June in the present year — 
" You have, I daresay, heard the Indians speak of di-dis and adqpies, 
some sort of wild people or ' devils,' they say, seen occasionally in the 
bush. Well, I will relate to you as I best can what I saw on Saturday 
last in the bush aback here. It was a rainy afternoon, and I went aback 
to pick up tonkin-beans. I had a long way to go and did not get any. 
On my way back I went into the swamp, and was picking up souari- 
nuts under a tree. The rain had ceased about half an hour before, and, 
there was no wind at the time. I was stooping down, when I heard the 
bush near me shake. I looked up and saw a small tree, about 30 yards 
from me, shaking. I cocked my gun and stepped quickly toward the 
tree, which continued shaking ; as I expected to find some animal 
rubbing against it. There was a large tacouba* between me and the 
shaking tree ; and when I got about 15 yards from the tree, I saw a 
something. I could only see the upper part of the object's body — the 
tacouba and dahlibanna f hid the lower part. This upper part was like 
the body, as far down as the navel, of a child a little bigger than K — J 
and was quite black, and shone as if it had been varnished. There 
* Tacouba is here used of a fallen tree-trunk. — Ed. 
t Dahlibanna is a low-growing palm (Geonoma) found in swamps. — Ed. 
I A child 2i ycais old, but large for her age.— Ed. 
