The polar bear, Thalarctos maritimus, (Phipps) enjoys such colloquial names as: “ice-bear,” “sea-bear,” “ice-tiger” and “ice-king.” In view of its large size and its supremacy over the other beasts of the ice-floes it well deserves these epithets. Primarily the polar bear is an animal of the broken arctic pack ice and is found in greatest numbers along the southern edge of the pack. It avoids large expanses of open water or frozen sea ice. The movements of the pack ice to a large degree determine its distribution and movements. Polar bears are carried southward with the pack ice in the spring and summer. In August and September when the ice begins to break up they generally come ashore and make their way north. At this time of year they may be found in considerable numbers along certain coasts where the sea ice has been brought by the winds, tides and currents. An Eskimo from Southampton Island, in northern Hudson Bay, informed me that in August, 1948, he and a companion counted over 180 of these bears along the east coast of that island.

In 1949 work commenced on the most ambitious development scheme so far carried out in Ceylon, for the opening up of some 400,000 acres of forest for agricultural and industrial purposes. The whole scheme comes under the auspices of an autonomous body “The Gal Oya Development Board”. A dam has been built across the Gal Oya, which is a perennial river, to form, a vast reservoir, the largest in the island, covering some 35·8 square miles. Large tracts of forest-land have been cleared for cultivation and settlement and a net-work of roads and distributory channels has been constructed.

I was on my way to Yala one evening and, near Wilapalawewa, I noticed a leopard lying beneath a tree. I took cover and watched. The leopard was lying on its belly with its forelegs stretched forward and its gaze was fixed on a herd of spotted deer which was grazing about 100 yards away. It kept tossing its tail about but its head and body were motionless. The unsuspecting deer were nibbling the grass and moving slowly forward towards the leopard. As they approached closer and closer the leopard gradually brought its forelegs back close to its body and kept its head low down, but the occasional twitching of the tail continued. When the deer were within 20 yards the leopard became very tense and I knew that the charge was imminent.

Lions.—One day I found a pride of fifteen lions gathered round the putrid remains of a hippo cow, lying in shallow water at the edge of a wide sand bank. Dozens of crocodiles, attracted by the tainted air and water, lay basking on the sand, the nearest within twenty yards of the lions. The animals were so engrossed in their affairs, two old males growling and snarling at one another across the carcase, that I was able to stalk them over the bare sand and approach sufficiently closely to photograph them, though not so near as to anything like fill my viewfinder.

Although the electric fence has been proved a successful deterrent to crop-raiding deer, pig, gaur and other wild animals, I hesitate to sing its praises against elephant.

Until nearly the end of the nineteenth century about two-thirds of Southern Rhodesia was uninhabitable by domestic cattle, and thus, to a great extent, unusable by mankind whether European or native, because of the disease trypanosomiasis. In man this is called sleeping sickness, in cattle nagana. It is caused by trypanosomes, minute organisms which live in the blood of the victims of the disease. These trypanosomes are sucked up, with the blood of the infected man or beast, by blood-sucking tsetse flies, develop in the fly and may be transmitted to the next creature on which the fly feeds.

Suffolk is probably better known for its famous domestic “trinity of breeds”, the Suffolk Horse, the Red Poll Cow and the Suffolk Sheep, than for its wild mammals, though some of these last are interesting as being apparently at the extreme end of their geographical range. Everywhere it is one of the most highly keepered and over most of its area one of the most highly cultivated of all English counties, though there is a considerable acreage of light sandy heaths along the east coast and in the Breckland on the north western border, heaths now largely covered by the coniferous plantations of the Forestry Commission. Even on the better land there is a fairly considerable acreage of mixed deciduous woodland in private ownership, most of it planted during the first half of the nineteenth century as pheasant coverts.