149 Kassam Did another night shift last night, and am repeating it tonight to get plants dry for shipment to Lae before we leave the Highlands. Today's botanizing was along the creek in an upstream direction, collecting amphibious plants and odds and ends from the banks. Several sedges, Cardamine, 2 Polygonum spp., the umbellifer used throughout the Highlands for greens, etc. On a request from John Womersley, who wishes to grow it in the Botanic Gardens at Lae, I had John and one of my boys collect 5 seedlings and suckers of the giant banana of Kassam Gap -- Ensete calosperma, according to Womersley. Three more mammals new for the camp today: Antechinus sp. and Uromys caudimaculatus trapped, Phalanger gymnotis caught on the ground by the dog of natives hunting over Arona way. Our only other gymnotis for the trip was taken at Kaindi. Sunday, November 8. About 50/50 cloud and sun. Lot of broken fog in the valley at dawn and about an hour later. We learn that last night's rain apparently was confined to the timbered range top, the road to Kainantu being dusty from this side of Arona. A busy last day at this camp. Self working on collections all day. Van had nothing in traps or nets last night -- due to the rain perhaps. He has been packing dry skins and skulls most of the day. John visited a village on the forest edge above Arona this morning in search of any available bits and pieces of Tachyglossus which may have been kept as trophies, or been thrown into the kitchen middens. No results, but he brought back a few mandibles of other mammals and some bone needles for which birds probably supplied the material. After lunch John walked up to Orona (not Arona) village in the hills to the south, where a Tachyglossus was reported eaten a couple of days before our arrival at Kassam. He brought back the nose part of a skull and a few black-tipped quills. Tonight he is out with local natives and their dogs on a hunt for the "porcupine." Had my boys go over some of the grasslands this morning, mainly to fill in short series. Pit-pit (Saccharum), which is so important in the Goroka Valley, is minor here. Land cultivated within fairly recent years carries mainly true "kunai" (Imperata cylindrica). Old-established grasslands are dominated by the Australian Kangaroo-grass, Themeda triandra. So far as I can see, on my limited observation here (I have concentrated on the primary forests), soils are not important in determining grass cover, except in moist hollows. Soils vary from a deep black of heavy texture (1-at least 5-6 feet over yellow clay) as at our camp, to a reddish laterite. The grasslands of the Highlands are of economic importance to Europeans because, wherever they can, the natives have their gardens either in new clearings in the primary forest of the "pioneer line" on in forest second growths, and government policy practically restricts European settlement to grasslands not occupied by the natives. These grasslands merit a special botanical and ecological study. Mostly from the primary forests which cover the upper parts of the Kratke Mts., I have 211 botanical numbers from this camp, including 37 bryophytes; 1147 herbarium sheets. The forests, being dominated by Castanopsis and oaks, are poor in species of canopy trees and the under layers are poor floristically. There is in most places a definite subcanopy layer of trees below the canopy and above the substage.