the place where he had been but still could not find it. He probed around and eventually, under a log, saw something that he could not identify; he poked the object, which moved, and turned out to be a seven-foot carpet snake, non- venomous and of the constrictor group. He killed it and brought it back to camp where we opened it, Inside was a young flying squirrel. It has now been separated from the rest of the collection and is to be z-rayed in order to find out if there are any bullets in it. But that is not the whole of the story; it is of a genus which has not previously been known north of the Ravenshoe, a place about five hundred miles away. In the snake also was a young bendicoot so it was a case of three speci- mens with one shot. green Later I got a/tree snake in our camp kitchen and these are the only snakes collected in this camp though Len saw one this morning when he was out. It has been a miserable day, overcast with constant rain spells. Hunting of all sorts was very poor though I personally covered many miles in the forest and came in with quite a selection of vermin, centipedes, scorpions, bugs of varying descriptions and, finally, my green tree snake. It has just begun to rain again now and quite a heavy shower is going on. I don't know when the laundry I did yesterday will get dry but imagine it will b not be until I wear the things. Monday, 10 May 1948. The moderately gentle south-east trade wind changed last night into a roaring, blustering gale, bringing heavy showers of rain and dashing the drops against the taut canvas of the tents like so many thrown pebbles. There is no land to the south-east of us, unless it be Cape Horn, many thousands of miles away and there is nothing to break the force of the wind except the low ridge of sand dunes behind which we are camped. The day broke dull and overcast and the showers have come every fifteen minutes or so throughout the day. I was out all morning and was soaked twice. This time I back-tracked along the wagon road towards Lockerbie for perhaps a mile and then turned off to the left, in general a south-easterly direction. About a hundred yards from the trail I came to an open glade, about the size of a football field, sandy ground, with rivers of clear water flowing as a result of the rains. Under normal conditions it should have been a good col- lecting area but everything was awash, even the clumps of ti-tree and casua- rina with which it was dotted. If the weather clears before we return to Lockerbie I shall try it again. The showers seem to have driven all the creatures to cover and mammal collecting continues to be poor. In addition, the salt air and driving sand are doing considerable damage to the traps. On my way back this morning I came across Moreton sitting disconsolately on the ground. He had uses his last match and wanted a smoke. I supplied him with one, he lit a long tube of newspaper with a few chunks of twist tobacco in it and trotted back to camp. Both the boys seem a little nervous in this country and may be afraid of ghosts. Willie, born in this neighborhood, would know all the hanuted spots and pass them on to Moreton. Moreton, older and more of an abbo, would fear them as much as Willie, and all of them are afraid of the "quinkin", the little hairy men, who seem to be forest Pucks, more mischievous than evâl, who apparently do harm just to watch their larger black brethren squirm. The story goes that one of the Cowall Creek blacks came home late and found one of the quinkin in bed with his wife. The quinkin knocked the husband cold and it