L.10, P. 7 This afternoon I took Aia and some seventy traps and drove out with Beech to his farm. I had previously arranged with Vernon to let me take a cot and mosquito net out to his place so that when I felt so disposed I could stay on there for the night. I have reached the conclusion that Beech's and Vrnnon's places offer about the best trapping possibilities on Daru Island. With this last lot of traps I began at the back corner of Maidment's where the coconut sets are and traveled along the scrubby belt, partly mangrove, behind Beech's and Vernon's sections well into the latter. There were still 15 small traps to be set when I came out to fiind out just where I was. Did not go back to set the rest but went up to Vernon's house and across back to Beech's where I found him transplanting Chinese cabbage. In the trap line I set the first forty traps (all rat size) on the ground in suitable places (there is some very dense long grass in open spots), and the rest (all small mouse traps as tree sets. Saw signs of feral pigs in the scrub. Sunday, Mar. 1. The new trapline was rather disappointing. Went out early with Beech before sun-up, a lovely salmon colored sunrise. B. presented me with a drink of fresh milk and a couple of apples (the latter not grown here). Back along the trapline the mosquiotos were waiting in vast quantities for me and made the most of their opportunities as usual. The only creature in the traps was another skink. Last night just at dark two boys from the village brought in a couple of Pipistrellus bats which they said they had secured by whipping a stick back and forth in the air over on the avenue which is lined with big mango trees. Sunday is the day when the "boys" receive their week's special rations: tinned meat, tea, sugar, salt, etc.; there is a daily ration of rice, peas, and soforth. In the afternoon sent Aia out to rebait; and I set another twenty rat traps around the dense lines of weeds between his rows of kapok. Heavy rain came on in the middle of things and I wen up ot the house to let it pass and finished the job afterwards. The view from the high porch of our house is pleasant and interesting: Straight in from and from side to side the two-mile wide straight stretches, and beyond it the mangrove fringed coast of the mainland of South New Guinea. Our house lies nearly a hundred yards back from the beach and on a slight rise, so that from the veranda we can overlook everything. The space between house and shore is grassy field, with a few rows of quite young coconuts planted immediately behind the wooden sea-wall. Over on the left side of our fields the small corrugated iron shed where the "boys" are housed; and beyond it can be seen the long jetty, built far enough out into the channel to allow shallow (very) draft boats to come in to it at low tide. On the right the open-spacing of the stems of a grove of old coconuts allows ample view down the channel to the east. As I write it is chäse upon sun-set; the boys keep up a constant chattering at the "boy house", a chattering which is pleasantly modulated by distance. All day long they have been singing to celebrate Sunday, mostly "John Brown's Body..." over and over again. Truly the Missions at the eastern end of New Guinea have made the most of their chances. A boy has just left the "house" with two old 5-gallon kerosine cans, schich serve as water pails; and away out at the edge of the receding tide a lad in a red "rami" (skirt) is poking around in the nearly rippleless water for shell fish or crabs. Overhead big martins are diving and wheeling around picking of gnats or midges. Monday, Mar. 2. The fauna here is undoubtedly thin. With complete rebait-ing yesterday of the old line and the additional twenty which I put down myself, only three specimens were secured. One Melomys muscalis had the skin so badly damaged that I could not make it up, a Rattus brachyrrhinus was considerably damaged by ants, and the third, a young animal of the same species was so bad that I had to throw it away. The worst offender of the ants is one which covers the trapped animal (or merely the bait) with particles of soil and works under cover, but another rather larger black ant, which makes no shelter at all, is nearly as bad.