A curiously colored beast. Black and white mottled, with some yellow; the bare parts of the tail a shining black. The dorsal stripe of orientalis is present only as a groove in the hair. Our mammal score for Woodlark is now ten species. This, we learned on the radio last night, is a public holiday in PNG for the irixmix running of the Melbourne Cup. The US presidential elections have brought no comment from our Port Moresby Station. The big news is the British and French parachutist(?) invasion of Egypt. News of the hostilities there broke on the day of our arrival at Woodlark. The Australian young men with whom we have contact are very keenly interested, and seem prepared to go to fight if "the big toubadas" say so." Their thoughts are of Russia rather than Egypt. Wednesday Nov. 7: Wind still from NW. Much hot sun; a good deal of cloud; no rain. Botanized down the track and the motor road towards the landing. Went less than a mile. Not feeling very spry today. The heat, I think, and the change of the season. The thermometer in our jalousied verandah today rose to 90 F. That is hot for New Guinea. Rattus ruber in traps (plus one brought in by a native) and what we have been calling Macrorhodusus (probably Syconycteris), shot last night by one of the boys, brought the mammal score to 12 spp. for this camp. Three more of the mottle cuscus were jecked. Rus' chest trouble is much improved, but today he has symptoms of dysentery. Insect collecting is good both for butterflies and dragonflies and for light trapping at this camp. A very nice assortment of butterflies and dragonflies coming in. They are more plentiful than at any other camp excepting perhaps Waikina on Normanby Id. The light trap catch is mainly moths. There are few beetles and the very small things which usually drop into the beetles. Thursday Nov. 8: Very heavy rain at Kultumadau this morning, following a temperature of 30 F at six o'clock. No rain where I was, on the coastal lowlands. Sun very hot there. Got sunburned. Left at about 10 am on a trip to Lauani Plantation with Don Neate in their small launch, towing up a punt, to pick up copra. Distance about 10 miles. The plantation about tw miles in from the coast, on the left bank of a fair-sized mangrove creek carrying 3-9 feet of water behind the bar. A thousand acres were planted in the pre-war mining days (much prewar) by the owners of bussai mines. The area became badly overgrown during the war. Subsequent cutting produced a very heavy growth of secondary forest trees which was not kept down. Result is that about 400 acres is now out of production. Neates work the place on half shares, employing 14 Gosiago boys and a Woodlark bossboy. Trim little establishment consisting of hot-air copra drier, copra house, bossboy's house, and two small barracks for the laborers. The boys are on a mark of two bags of raw copra per day. There has been trouble of some kind, and production is down lately. We picked up 41 b gd of export copra. Botanized up the creek from the plantation buildings area in the launch. Went up under power and poled down. Deep, clear creek, slightly brackish with the tide. A few mangrove trees, but banks mostly lined with a gregarious, amphibious Pandanus with clustered smooth red fruitheads. This, with a big Allocasia-like eroid, climbing Ste- lochlaens ferns. The aquatic fern Diplozium esculentum, and floating beds of Pistia stra- tiotes, Lippia, Polygonum, and Mericryllum, gave the floating beds of Pistia stratiotes the creek a very lush appearance. Quarter to 2 mile up, we came to the head of the creek. It bubbles out of the coral limestone country rock according to Don. This was covered by waters backed up by the tide. Hanguas grew here. Collected a most unexpected lot of about 3 to 10 aquatic and amphibious plants. Did not get back to camp until 7:30.