Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/345

 from troubling—although there is still a stretch of flat country and a supply of stagnant water in the shape of small lakes; I say this regretfully, but science is truth. I once had a nice little theory, that worked well in the Niger Delta, that you never had mosquitoes if you had a 4-knot current water supply; unless you bred the said mosquitoes for yourself, in tanks or barrels; because, said the theory, the larva got washed away down. But although the Ogowé has a 4-knot current twice over at Osamokita, and there are no mosquitoes; still there are those lakes in the forest at the back of it; so any one who can patch that theory up, and make it go again, is welcome to it. Again regarding mosquito distribution, there's a pretty solid fog of them from Kangwe to Arevooma, from Arevooma on to Lake Ncovi, and at Lake Ncovi they—but it's no use my writing down my opinion about mosquitoes in Lake Ncovi because no one will print it. When we left Ncovi, and got well into the forest, we missed them, and were no more troubled with them, until we got here to Agonjo, where there is not a 4-knot current; but I will not revert to that, and merely remark a peculiarity I have observed in mosquitoes since I have been so much in touch with them in Congo Français, and that is that they evidently feed on oil; several—many hundreds that I have crushed have left quite a pool of oil—I presume palm oil, but it may be animal fat. I should remark before leaving this subject that there are two schools in this district which quarrel much over the merits of their separate methods of destroying mosquitoes—the Flappists and the Crushers. I am a Crusher, holding it better to allow the vermin to get a hold, and his entire mind set on blood, and then to descend on him quietly, but firmly, with a finger; as for those heretics the Flappists they always hurt themselves, and frequently fail to bag their game, by their more showy methods.

I really thought that I was again getting a chance to secure a valuable specimen of spectra domestica—or the common domestic ghost—the first night in Agonjo. I held it to be the ghost of a carpenter, for it made a continuous sawing noise in the bamboo wall by the side of my bed, but again I was disappointed it was only the usual rat. This enterprising rodent indeed was a fellow collector, and had stolen the bladder off