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I have left to the last the animal which should perhaps have been mentioned before the very much smaller insects I first spoke about. He is the monkey, and even more interesting to watch than the ant, because he is very clever indeed and can do almost anything a man can do except talk. He chatters instead, and we can't understand what he says, though sometimes he understands quite clearly what we say. He is a very mischievous little fellow and loves to take things out of peoples' pockets, and play in the trees. Of course most of these live a wild life in the jungle where they eat nuts and fruit and some other plants. They won't eat meat at all.

Before Daddy came to the camp a sergeant caught one of these monkeys in the jungle when she was quite young, and now she lives just outside Daddy's basha and. whenever we are there we always watch Mrs Monk, who is called "Clapper". A long piece of wire is stretched between two trees, and on this wire is a ring which can slide up and down, to this ring is tied a long piece of cord at the end of which is our friend Clapper. She can climb around in the trees on the end of her cord and has endless games. Sometimes we pick her up and throw her high into a tree and then two of us hold out a handkerchief underneath and she falls down straight into it. She likes this game; at other times we dress her in an old stocking and you should see her games then. Sometimes we give her a bath, although she does'nt really need one and hates soap; but she loves to play in the water just like you and Gillian, and we have to throw the water away before she will come out. Every evening when we have had our dinner we bring out a tin plate with peas, potatoes and a few nuts on it. Monkeys have very clever fingers indeed, and it is very amusing to watch her taking the outer skin off a pea before eating it, and she only eats one pea at a time. She also likes bread very much, so we always give her a piece with her dinner. One of her favourite amusements is to stand on any-one's foot and pull individual hairs on their legs. Perhaps she finds very tiny things there which we can't see! Who knows! We have to be very careful when walking by within reach of her rope because she springs on our backs suddenly, and before we know where we are, she is up a tree with something out of our pockets. One day she took Daddy's glasses like this and also jumped on his arm when he was carrying a mug of tea. Fortunately Daddy got his glasses back safely — and he did this by giving her a cigarette to play with. She brought the glasses back and then took the cigarette all to pieces — a favourite game of hers.

There is only one other thing to tell you about now, and that is a plant which grows here looking something like a fern — the leaves of which curl up quite closely when they are touched, and the stem droops. This happens quite quickly and is very amazing to watch.

As there are plenty of ponds and rivers nearby, Daddy often goes fishing and catches some nice fish with his rod and line, which is a bamboo with just a piece of thin string on the end — at the other end is the hook. As all the ponds and rivers are very muddy Daddy does'nt need to use gut — which has to be used in England where the water is nice and clean, in order to prevent the fish seeing it. Some of the fish are just like those at home and have the same names, but there are many others which Daddy has'nt been able to find a name for at all. The fish Daddy catches are always very welcome in the local villages, so when the Indians there see him carrying his rod, they send out their little boys and girls into the paddy fields to catch shrimps and tiny fishes. This they usually do with their hands. As this is quite hard work for such little fingers Daddy always gives them a few annas and then he can carry on fishing with the bait they have got for him.

Now there is still another thing which happens in India very much more than in England, and that is the lightning and thunder which always comes with the rain out here. You will have seen this before, of course, and Daddy thought that perhaps you would like to know how it happens.

Up in the sky you can nearly always see some clouds which are made of very tiny drops of water, like the steam coming out of a kettle, and there are also small pieces of dust — just as you can see them — dancing about in a bright ray of sunshine, particularly after Mummy has been sweeping the floor. Now these clouds are very big indeed — especially when there is a storm, and sometimes they cover the whole sky — I expect you have noticed they always look very dirty and black then too. You can guess that with such great clouds, there are, as I have told you, lots of particles of water and dust — so many in fact that if you tried to count them you would never finish — even if you lived thousands of years. Now although you can't see these because they are too small and too far away, the small drops of water and pieces of dust are being blown about very roughly — right inside the cloud, so roughly in fact, that if you were inside the cloud in an aeroplane, your plane would be thrown all over the place — just like a leaf fluttering in the wind. Now a very wonderful thing happens when tiny drops of water are all rushing about like this, and that is caused by friction. (Of course any two things rubbing together cause friction.) This friction of the drops of water against each other and also against the air and the tiny pieces of dust, causes each drop to get charged by electricity. I expect you know that electricity is the wonderful thing which lights the lamp in your room, when you put on the switch. Now there are two different sorts of electricity, just as there are two different sorts of people, boys and girls, and these two sorts of electricity are called positive and negative. Well we've got our cloud, countless little drops of water, which often have a little piece of dust inside, and all these little drops have, after a time, got a charge of electricity due to the friction I spoke about. You can see then that the whole cloud is full of electricity, and we will say that this is a positive kind of electricity, I've just spoken about. Now you know that when you put some water in a cup the cup will soon get full, and water will spill over the side. This also happens in the cloud and when the cloud is so full of electricity that it can't bold it any more, then a great flash of lightning strikes, either through the sky to another cloud — this can only happen when the other cloud has a charge of electricity which is negative — or down to the ground, which is also normally taken to be full of negative electricity. Now your cup of water only spilled a little over the edge and the rest remained inside, but the cloud spills all its electricity in a great flash which lights up all the sky, and also the room in which you are sitting — If the curtains are not drawn — This great flash always happens at the same time too because the air in between the clouds, or between the clouds and the ground, is not strong enough to keep these great forces of different kinds of electricity apart, so the air gives way. Now these flashes are sometimes miles long and take up a very great deal of space in the air, and when the flash is over no air is left in the space because it is all burned up. Now air is very like water, and will fill up any empty space in which there is nothing, so in the space made by the lightning flash, the air all round which has'nt been burned up, rushes back, and then you hear that great noise which is called thunder. Another thing you will notice is that you always hear the thunder after the lightning has finished, and that is because light travels much faster than the sound you hear with your ears. Pop can tell you lots more about this — and also show you what friction is, and how it can cause electricity.

Well David, this has grown into a very long story and I expect by now you are a very sleepy boy, so I will say goodnight and God bless you. I hope you have had a very happy birthday. Daddy was going to make lots more drawings and sketches, but he has only been able to do this story at night time when lots of mosquitoes are also buzzing about, and it has taken many nights to write out all these pages. However there won't be time for the sketches now because an aeroplane is waiting to take this story to England as quickly as possible, but in the next few weeks Daddy will make the drawings and send them off to you separately in another aeroplane.
Daddy has been thinking about that little piece of poetry at the beginning of the story which comes from "Alice in Wonderland", and finds he has mentioned (although he never had this idea to start with) all the things in it except the Walrus, the Cabbage and the Sealing Wax. I shall have to leave the Walrus for Mummy to show you, and of course you have eaten and seen plenty of Cabbages. Daddy would like to too, but out here, they only have dehydrated cabbage, and this is'nt nice at all — despite all the things the clever scientists say about it, and the very best of water. You must'nt forget to read "Alice in Wonderland" when you are a little bigger, and then you will run across the poetry too, when you read about the "Walrus and the Carpenter."

Don't forget to say "Christopher Robin" — and I will think about you. Sleep well — I wish I was there to see you.

Your loving Daddy

XXX

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