Wednesday, March 3 Since my return to Cairns the weather has been hot and muggy with only occasional showers or heavier rains from thunderstorms. Yesterday the barometer dropped one tenth of an inch and rain set in before nightfall. Real wet today, but the barometer is rising. Abiss and the driver turned up early this morning in an army weapon carrier with a tarp rigged over the top for shelter, and George and Van left with them in pouring rain at 7.30. The rains have extended inland and travel is likely to be slow on the unpaved roads beyond Herberton. With Bates to Merinda, 11 miles south, to visit the sugar ex- periment station of the Department of Agriculture. Bates is to take over the directorship in the near future. J. H. Buzacott, formerly entomologist at the station, now in charge. Staff consists of W. Humphrey, experimentalist; G. Wilson, entomologist; F. Lindsay, Farm assistant; R. Abbott, field officer. Area of 37 acres under experi- mental plantings of cane, cover crops, etc. All plant breeding of sugarcane in Queensland is done here. A good collection of breeding stock including many from the U. S. and New Guinea (some of latter collected by Brandeis, of USDA). Workers here speak highly of cooper- ation from Washington; the reverse from their fellow workers in the Dutch East Indies. The Dutch try to monopolize anything new they produce. Queensland produces about 600,000 tons of cane sugar per year. Production is under strict control. Each farmer is allowed to plant so much acreage per year and he must hold one fourth of his sugar producing land in fallow. The rotation is one crop of plant cane, two crops ratoon, one year fallow. Most farmers in this area have 60 to 80 acres under planting permit; 40 acres is considered the minimum profitable area. Average production of cane per acre for Queensland is 17 tons an acre; average for Cairns area 22 tons; present price On the way back to town we stopped to look for bats in a number of abandoned tunnels in which ammunition was stored during the war. This was at Red Hill, 4 miles out. Found a line of bat droppings in the middle of the floor of all the tunnels, but not a single bat.Do bats migrate? Buzacott has offered me the facilities of his laboratory for e drying collections. Thursday, March 4 Unions in the southern states are threatening a boycott on transport to Queensland and the strikers show no sign of going backeton work. Flood rains are holding up road transport of supplies to areas that are short of food. At last I have found a man who has climbed Mt. Finnegan. This is Mr. Alf Hansen, a versatile man of high reputation in this north ces country, who built the sawmill at Shipton's Flat and managed opera- tions there for six years. This was back in the thirties. Hansen