sonorous staccato noise, like the slow beat of a wooden mallet on a wooden drum, and combined with the other curious properties of this altitude to make the place more unearthly and more dreary than ever. Lutnineva went with me. We munched our ship's bis- cuits in a steady rain and gazed gloomily at each other across a bog. We had shot nothing more than four thick- heads. In the afternoon the wind continued and the birds remained out of the area of the trail. We returned to camp with a day's work of six common birds. I tried going barefoot today as an experiment. On the strength of Mr. Fordyce's adventure and the lack of shoes in the Territory of New Guinea it might seem that this is an expedient adjustment. It turned out very well. I managed to keep my bandages away from snares and twigs and although I moved slower than usual I had less difficulty with the smooth muddy incline of the trail. It is possible that with a little more practice I will be able to attain native velocity in this medium, although it is extremely doubtful. January 14th. Today is Dr. Drowne's birthday. He has fully recovered his spirits if not all his strength. We left off the mountain trip as usual on Saturdays, spending most of the day skinning birds shot yesterday around the camp. In addition to these was a very beau- tiful hawk shot by Hamlin. It is about the same size as our first hawk, eighteen inches over all, blue black feathers on the back, with a barred breast, yellowish brown with horizontal black stripes. Bakki, our cook-boy