do their tidying up at supremely inconvenient times. I remember an incident at one place in the Lower Congo where I had been informed that "cork fever" was epidemic in a severe form among the white population. I was returning to quarters from a beetle hunt, in pouring rain; it was as it often is, "the wet season," &c., when I saw a European gentleman about twenty yards from his comfortable-looking house seated on a chair, clad in a white cotton suit, umbrellaless, and with the water running off him as if he was in a douche bath. I had never seen a case of cork fever, but I had heard such marvellous and quaint tales of its symptoms that I thought—well, perhaps, anyhow, I would not open up conversation. To my remorse he said, as I passed him, "Drivers." Inwardly apologising, I outwardly commiserated him, and we discoursed. It was on this occasion that I saw a mantis, who is by way of being a very pretty pirate on his own account, surrounded by a mob of the blind hurrying Drivers who, I may remark, always attack like Red Indians in open order. That mantis perfectly well knew his danger, but was as cool as a cucumber, keeping quite quiet and lifting his legs out of the way of the blind enemies around him. But the chances of keeping six legs going clear, for long, among such brutes without any of them happening on one, were small, even though he only kept three on the ground at one time. So, being a devotee of personal courage, I rescued him—whereupon he bit me for my pains. Why didn't he fly? How can you fly, I should like to know, unless you have a jumping off place?
Drivers are indeed dreadful. I was at one place where there had been a white gentleman and a birthday party in the evening; he stumbled on his way home and went
