The plantation is in process of being cleaned by the local people on contract. Probably about 50 men at work this morning, cutting brush four women cutting grass around the smokehouse and boyhouse. The price for cleaning the 60-7- acres is to be 10- pounds in cash, plus a bag of rice and a case of meat for a feast - if the job is done well and with despatch. The people have just learned that Callanan is due on Monday and they are making a great effort to complete the work in a week. Collected over 20 numbers of plants, mostly littoral species and weeds native and introduced. The littoral trees were Hernandia and Scaevola; Tournefortia is here but sterile, A common regrowth fig added another to the rather numerous spp. collected on the island. A spiny Rattus in traps shows that that the species taken a few nights ago on Boboa Island is a different species. Thursday Sept. 20: Weather as yesterday (at least in the hills) with continued high drift of cumulus clouds from the NW, No rain at camp; I had showers at about 1000 in the mountains. A long morning in the field, from 7:15 to 1:35, took me about three miles inland and one mile from Mt. Imau. The altitude I'd say was about 1000 feet. The forest improved as I made the long, slow ascent, hunting for trees to collect. It became wetter, and somewhat mossy and cooler. Finally, the little used track I followed broke out on to grassland. Not the coarse grass one would expect to find at this altitude, but a fine cover only about ankle high as a rule. It was like coming onto alpine grassland from the subalpine forest of New Guinea, at about ten thousand feet. A subalpine appearance was given by the forest surrounding the grassland, a low stand of Decrydium and Casuarine that looked coniferous. The grassland, undoubtedly the site of a settlement long since abandoned, was open and in places rolling, and perhaps 50 to 100 acres in area. An outcropping brown slaty rock was so soft that I could kick it to pieces. Some interesting small herbs on the grassland: Eriocaulon, dwarf Mitrassone, a yellowish Stricularia, Stackhousia, and what I take to be a Leschenaultia and Lycopodium carolinianum. The last two could be at alpine levels. I don't think I have collected Leschenaultia in New Guinea before. A brown-foliaged low tree Rhodamnia formed a border community. Numerous pig rootings about the forest borders, often containing water. One of my objectives today was the collecting of an oak which I expected to find on the slopes. Found only one tree, at about 500 feet, with leaves badly eaten by insects, but with young acorns. Lionel and Liklik, jacking last night, both got two Pteropus. One rat in traps. One of the bats was conspicillatus, only occasionally collected on the island. Friday Sept. 21: A beautiful early morning followed by a generally overcast and in part showery day Having a morning's work on hand, I sent the boys into the field and, between showers, they collected six numbers new to the collection. Made color pictures, I hope, of a beautiful cream and orange Dendrobium of highland type collected in the mountains yesterday. Using directions recently received from the National Geographic re focusing the close-up equipment. Nothing in traps. Two cuscus, two Pteropus hypomelanis, a Dobsonia and a Nyctimene jacked by Lionel, Rus and Liklik. The locality appears to be exhausted for variety of mammals, at least on present methods. There should be more small bats here, and there are reports indicating the presence of Satanellus. A Melomys is known from Rossel, and might be here, too, but only this evening have traps been set in the primary forest of the slopes, about 20 minutes walk for a boy from camp. The caution necessary for a booted person on several hundred yards og "bridge" through the mangrove fringe adds short five minutes to the walk for a white man.