-87- Two boys very ill from eating tainted pork brought up by the Biniguni village policeman. Much vomiting. After a salt and water emetic they began to recover. Wednesday, July 15, 1953: Dull day; some sun in camp where the ground is beginning to dry; no rain. High, heavy overcast at about the altitude of #2 Camp where no doubt the weather is as wet as ever. Had good collecting at a creek about 5 minutes from camp to the west. Stream bed rocky, 15-25 ft. wide, with succession of small cascades and deep pools. Learned that the boys took a fair sized eel from a pool yesterday. Killed it with an axe and ate it. Fired rogue and trouble maker Jimmy (Bolis Manaboleina) and sent him down to Biniguni with Ken this morning. He carries letters asking Mason to ration him at Menapi, request for a boat passage to Samarai, and to Buntings to pay him off and repatriate him to his village. Loud wailing from the boy's quarters as Jimmy prepared to leave, changed to laughing chatter 15 minutes later. There was a risk of other boys from Jimmy's village deciding to go with him. Under their contract of service they have the right to clear out any time and we can fire them when we wish. I have a feeling there is a general sense of relief in camp now Jimmy has gone. Thursday, July 16, 1953: Sunny until late afternoon. No rain or mist. Lowlands and coast hazy; the usual haze of the SE season. Botanized up the trail to where rain forest gives place to oak forest in about 50 m. of altitude. Here at camp a small-acorned oak occurs in the rain forest. Up the hill no acorns were seen on the ground. Evidently different species are involved. The oak forest carries a scattering of other big trees, including an Elaeocarpus, but of all the trees, big and small, only one undergrowth species was found fertile. Geoff and his boys opened a trail east to the Atairo this afternoon. Not much difficulty, it seems, and the stream much bigger than at the #2 Camp level. A 100 ft. waterfall just above where the track reaches the stream. Three spp. of butterflies and one damsel-fly netted there. Van getting very few mammals. Only 8 specimens up to 8 o'clock this evening. But they represent 6 species: Rattus, Leucopus, Pogonomys (2), Pogonomelomys, Leptomys and Epimyspera. Small bats fly in the forest and rarely over the camp, clearing in the evening and about dusk one or two flying foxes wing eastwards out of gunshot range. An occasional wallow in the forest indicates wild pigs. The Leptomys was trapped at #2 Camp. All other mammals taken here are new to the collection. Friday, July 17, 1953: Overcast day; a drizzle at 4 P.M. Patches of sunlight over the lowlands towards evening. Clear starry night (as two previous nights. Collected in rain forest in the ravine of the creek west of camp. But for ferns, which seem to be in New Guinea in endless variety, the bag would have been poor. The blue D'Albertis creeper (Dioclea) common as a big canopy liana in these rain forests, sprinkling the ground with its 2-inch flowers. The only big tree collected so far is an Elaeocarpus with very immature small fruits.