[Illustration: WILLIAM BEEBE Author of Edge of the Jungle, Jungle Days, Gallapagos, World's End, The Arcturus Adventure, etc. ]

 BY THE AUTHOR OF "JUNGLE DAYS, " "THE LOG OF THE SUN, " ETC. 

 EDGE OF THE

 JUNGLE

 By WILLIAM BEEBE

 _Honorary Curator of Birds and Director of the Tropical Research Station of the New York Zoological Society. _

 GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

 GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO. , INC. 

 COPYRIGHT, 1921

 BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

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TOTHE BIRDS AND BUTTERFLIES, THE ANTS AND TREE-FROGSWHO HAVE TOLERATED ME INTHEIR JUNGLE ANTE-CHAMBERSI OFFER THIS VOLUME OFFRIENDLY WORDS

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NOTE

This second series of essays, following those in _Jungle Peace_, arerepublished by the kindness of the Editors of _The Atlantic Monthly_, _Harper's Magazine_ and _House and Garden_. 

With the exception of _A Tropic Garden_ which refers to the BotanicalGardens of Georgetown, all deal with the jungle immediately about theTropical Research Station of the New York Zoological Society, situatedat Kartabo, at the junction of the Cuyuni and Mazaruni Rivers, inBritish Guiana. 

For the accurate identification of the more important organismsmentioned, a brief appendix of scientific names has been prepared. 

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I THE LURE OF KARTABO 3

II A JUNGLE CLEARING 34

III THE HOME TOWN OF THE ARMY ANTS 58

IV A JUNGLE BEACH 90

V A BIT OF USELESSNESS 112

VI GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 123

VII A JUNGLE LABOR UNION 149

VIII THE ATTAS AT HOME 172

IX HAMMOCK NIGHTS 195

X A TROPIC GARDEN 230

XI THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES 252

XII SEQUELS 274

 APPENDIX OF SCIENTIFIC NAMES 295

 INDEX 299

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EDGE OF THE JUNGLE

"For the true scientific method is this:To trust no statements without verification, to test all things as rigorously as possible, to keep no secrets, to attempt no monopolies, to give out one's best modestly and plainly, serving no other end but knowledge. "

H. G. WELLS. 

I

THE LURE OF KARTABO

A house may be inherited, as when a wren rears its brood in turnwithin its own natal hollow; or one may build a new home such as isfashioned from year to year by gaunt and shadowy herons; or we mayhave it built to order, as do the drones of the wild jungle bees. Inmy case, I flitted like a hermit crab from one used shell to another. This little crustacean, living his oblique life in the shallows, changes doorways when his home becomes too small or hinders him insearching for the things which he covets in life. The differencebetween our estates was that the hermit crab sought only for food, Ichiefly for strange new facts--which was a distinction as trivial asthat he achieved his desires sideways and on eight legs, while Itraversed my environment usually forward and generally on two. 

The word of finance went forth and demanded the felling of the secondgrowth around Kalacoon, and for the second time the land was givenover to cutlass and fire. But again there was a halting in the affairsof man, and the rubber saplings were not planted or were smothered;and again the jungle smiled patiently through a knee-tangle of thornsand blossoms, and the charred clumps of razor-grass sent forth skeinsof saws and hanks of living barbs. 

I stood beneath the familiar cashew trees, which had yielded for me sobountifully of their crops of blossoms and hummingbirds, of fruit andof tanagers, and looked out toward the distant jungle, which trembledthrough the expanse of palpitating heat-waves; and I knew how a hermitcrab feels when its home pinches, or is out of gear with the world. And, too, Nupee was dead, and the jungle to the south seemed to callless strongly. So I wandered through the old house for the last time, sniffing the agreeable odor of aged hypo still permeating the darkroom, re-covering the empty stains of skins and traces of maps on thewalls, and re-filling in my mind the vacant shelves. The vampires hadreturned to their chosen roost, the martins still swept through thecorridors, and as I went down the hill, a moriche oriole sent a silvershaft of song after me from the sentinel palm, just as he had greetedme four years ago. 

Then I gathered about me all the strange and unnameable possessions ofa tropical laboratory--and moved. A wren reaches its home afterhundreds of miles of fast aerial travel; a hermit crab achieves a newlease with a flip of his tail. Between these extremes, and in no lessstrange a fashion, I moved. A great barge pushed off from the PenalSettlement, piled high with my zoölogical Lares and Penates, and alongeach side squatted a line of paddlers, --white-garbed burglars andmurderers, forgers and fighters, --while seated aloft on one of myammunition trunks, with a microscope case and a camera close under hiswatchful eye, sat Case, King of the Warders, the biggest, blackest, and kindest-hearted man in the world. 

Three miles up river swept my moving-van; and from the distance Icould hear the half-whisper--which was yet a roar--of Case as headmonished his children. "Mon, " he would say to a shirking, shrinkingcoolie second-story man, "mon, do you t'ink dis the time to sleep?What toughts have you in your bosom, dat you delay de Professor'shousehold?" And then a chanty would rise, the voice of the leaderquavering with that wild rhythm which had come down to him, a vocalheritage, through centuries of tom-toms and generations of savagesstriving for emotional expression. But the words were laughable orpathetic. I was adjured to

 "Blow de mon down with a bottle of rum, Oh, de mon--mon--blow de mon down. "

Or the jungle reëchoed the edifying reiteration of

 "Sardines--and bread--OH! Sardines--and bread, Sardines--and bread--AND! Sardines--and bread. "

The thrill that a whole-lunged chanty gives is difficult to describe. It arouses some deep emotional response, as surely as a military band, or the reverberating cadence of an organ, or a suddenly rememberedtheme of opera. 

As my aquatic van drew up to the sandy landing-beach, I looked at themotley array of paddlers, and my mind went back hundreds of years tothe first Spanish crew which landed here, and I wondered whether thesepirates of early days had any fewer sins to their credit than Case'sconvicts--and I doubted it. 

Across my doorstep a line of leaf-cutting ants was passing, eachbearing aloft a huge bit of green leaf, or a long yellow petal, or ahalberd of a stamen. A shadow fell over the line, and I looked up tosee an anthropomorphic enlargement of the ants, --the convicts windingup the steep bank, each with cot, lamp, table, pitcher, trunk, oraquarium balanced on his head, --all my possessions suspended betweenearth and sky by the neck-muscles of worthy sinners. The first thingto be brought in was a great war-bag packed to bursting, and Number214, with eight more years to serve, let it slide down his shoulderwith a grunt--the self-same sound that I have heard from a Tibetanwoman carrier, and a Mexican peon, and a Japanese porter, all of whomhad in past years toted this very bag. 

I led the way up the steps, and there in the doorway was a tenant, onewho had already taken possession, and who now faced me and thetrailing line of convicts with that dignity, poise, and perfectself-possession which only a toad, a giant grandmother of a toad, canexhibit. I, and all the law-breakers who followed, recognized thenine tenths involved in this instance and carefully stepped around. When the heavy things began to arrive, I approached diffidently, andhalf suggested, half directed her deliberate hops toward a safercorner. My feelings toward her were mingled, but altogetherkindly, --as guest in her home, I could not but treat her withrespect, --while my scientific soul revelled in the addition of _Bufoguttatus_ to the fauna of this part of British Guiana. Whetherflashing gold of oriole, or the blinking solemnity of a great toad, itmattered little--Kartabo had welcomed me with as propitious an omen ashad Kalacoon. 

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Houses have distinct personalities, either bequeathed to them by theirbuilders or tenants, absorbed from their materials, or emanating fromthe general environment. Neither the mind which had planned ourKartabo bungalow, nor the hands which fashioned it; neither themahogany walls hewn from the adjoining jungle, nor the white-pinebeams which had known many decades of snowy winters--none of thesewere obtrusive. The first had passed into oblivion, the second hadbeen seasoned by sun and rain, papered by lichens, and gnawed andbored by tiny wood-folk into a neutral inconspicuousness as completeas an Indian's deserted _benab_. The wide verandah was open on allsides, and from the bamboos of the front compound one looked straightthrough the central hall-way to bamboos at the back. It seemed like ahappy accident of the natural surroundings, a jungle-bound cave, orthe low rambling chambers of a mighty hollow tree. 

No thought of who had been here last came to us that first evening. Weunlimbered the creaky-legged cots, stiff and complaining after theirthree years' rest, and the air was filled with the clean odor ofmicaceous showers of naphthalene from long-packed pillows and sheets. From the rear came the clatter of plates, the scent of ripe papaws andbananas, mingled with the smell of the first fire in a new stove. ThenI went out and sat on my own twelve-foot bank, looking down on thesandy beach and out and over to the most beautiful view in theGuianas. Down from the right swept slowly the Mazaruni, and from theleft the Cuyuni, mingling with one wide expanse like a great roundedlake, bounded by solid jungle, with only Kalacoon and the PenalSettlement as tiny breaks in the wall of green. 

The tide was falling, and as I sat watching the light grow dim, thewater receded slowly, and strange little things floated pastdownstream. And I thought of the no less real human tide which longyears ago had flowed to my very feet and then ebbed, leaving, as driftis left upon the sand, the convicts, a few scattered Indians, andmyself. In the peace and quiet of this evening, time seemed a thing ofno especial account. The great jungle trees might always have beenlifeless emerald water-barriers, rather than things of a fewcenturies' growth; the ripple-less water bore with equal disregard thelast mora seed which floated past, as it had held aloft the keel of anunknown Spanish ship three centuries before. These men came up-riverand landed on a little island a few hundred yards from Kartabo. Herethey built a low stone wall, lost a few buttons, coins, and bullets, and vanished. Then came the Dutch in sturdy ships, cleared the isletof everything except the Spanish wall, and built them a jolly littlefort intended to command all the rivers, naming it Kyk-over-al. To-day the name and a strong archway of flat Holland bricks survive. 

In this wilderness, so wild and so quiet to-day, it was amazing tothink of Dutch soldiers doing sentry duty and practising with theirlittle bell-mouthed cannon on the islet, and of scores of negro andIndian slaves working in cassava fields all about where I sat. Andthis not fifty or a hundred or two hundred years ago, but about theyear 1613, before John Smith had named New England, while the Hudsonwas still known as the Maurice, before the Mayflower landed with allour ancestors on board. For many years the story of this settlementand of the handful of neighboring sugar-plantations is one ofprivateer raids, capture, torture, slave-revolts, disease, badgovernment, and small profits, until we marvel at the perseverance ofthese sturdy Hollanders. From the records still extant, we glean hereand there amusing details of the life which was so soon to falter andperish before the onpressing jungle. Exactly two hundred and fiftyyears ago one Hendrik Rol was appointed commander of Kyk-over-al. Hewas governor, captain, store-keeper and Indian trader, and his salarywas thirty guilders, or about twelve dollars, a month--about what Ipaid my cook-boy. 

The high tide of development at Kartabo came two hundred and threeyears ago, when, as we read in the old records, a Colony House waserected here. It went by the name of Huis Naby (the house nearby), from its situation near the fort. Kyk-over-al was now left to thegarrison, while the commander and the civil servants lived in the newbuilding. One of its rooms was used as a council chamber and church, while the lower floor was occupied by the company's store. The land inthe neighborhood was laid out in building lots, with a view toestablishing a town; it even went by the name of Stad Cartabo and hada tavern and two or three small houses, but never contained enoughdwellings to entitle it to the name of town, or even village. 

The ebb-tide soon began, and in 1739 Kartabo was deserted, and thirtyyears before the United States became a nation, the old fort onKyk-over-al was demolished. The rivers and rolling jungle wereattractive, but the soil was poor, while the noisome mud-swamps of thecoast proved to be fertile and profitable. 

Some fatality seemed to attach to all future attempts in this region. Gold was discovered, and diamonds, and to-day the wilderness here andthere is powdering with rust and wreathing with creeping tendrilsgreat piles of machinery. Pounds of gold have been taken out andhundreds of diamonds, but thus far the negro pork-knocker, with hispack and washing-pan, is the only really successful miner. 

The jungle sends forth healthy trees two hundred feet in height, thriving for centuries, but it reaches out and blights the attempts ofman, whether sisal, rubber, cocoa, or coffee. So far the ebb-tide hasleft but two successful crops to those of us whose kismet has led ushither--crime and science. The concentration of negroes, coolies, Chinese and Portuguese on the coast furnishes an unfailing supply ofconvicts to the settlement, while the great world of life all aboutaffords to the naturalist a bounty rich beyond all conception. 

So here was I, a grateful legatee of past failures, shaded bymagnificent clumps of bamboo, brought from Java and planted two orthree hundred years ago by the Dutch, and sheltered by a bungalowwhich had played its part in the development and relinquishment of agreat gold mine. 

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For a time we arranged and adjusted and shifted ourequipment, --tables, books, vials, guns, nets, cameras andmicroscopes, --as a dog turns round and round before it composes itselfto rest. And then one day I drew a long breath and looked about, andrealized that I was at home. The newness began to pass from my littleshelves and niches and blotters; in the darkness I could put my handon flash or watch or gun; and in the morning I settled snugly into mywoolen shirt, khakis, and sneakers, as if they were merely accessoryskin. 

In the beginning we were three white men and four servants--the latterall young, all individual, all picked up by instinct, except Sam, whowas as inevitable as the tides. Our cook was too good-looking and tooathletic to last. He had the reputation of being the fastest sprinterin Guiana, with a record, so we were solemnly told, of 9-1/5 secondsfor the hundred--a veritable Mercury, as the last world's record ofwhich I knew was 9-3/5. His stay with us was like the orbit of somecomets, which make a single lap around the sun never to return, andhis successor Edward, with unbelievably large and graceful hands andfeet, was a better cook, with the softest voice and gentlest manner inthe world. 

But Bertie was our joy and delight. He too may be compared to astar--one which, originally bright, becomes temporarily dim, andfinally attains to greater magnitude than before. Ultimately he becamea fixed ornament of our culinary and taxidermic cosmic system, andwhatever he did was accomplished with the most remarkable contortionsof limbs and body. To watch him rake was to learn new anatomicalpossibilities; when he paddled, a surgeon would be moved toastonishment; when he caught butterflies, a teacher of physicalculture would not have believed his eyes. 

At night, when our servants had sealed themselves hermetically intheir room in the neighboring thatched quarters, and the last squeakfrom our cots had passed out on its journey to the far distant goal ofall nocturnal sounds, we began to realize that our new home held manymore occupants than our three selves. Stealthy rustlings, indistinctscrapings, and low murmurs kept us interested for as long as tenminutes; and in the morning we would remember and wonder who ourfellow tenants could be. Some nights the bungalow seemed as full oflife as the tiny French homes labeled, "_Hommes 40: Chevaux 8_, " whenthe hastily estimated billeting possibilities were actually achieved, and one wondered whether it were not better to be the _chevalpremier_, than the _homme quarantième_. 

For years the bungalow had stood in sun and rain unoccupied, with awatchman and his wife, named Hope, who lived close by. The aptness ofhis name was that of the little Barbadian mule-tram which creepsthrough the coral-white streets, striving forever to divorce motionfrom progress and bearing the name Alert. Hope had done his duty andwatched the bungalow. It was undoubtedly still there and nothing hadbeen taken from it; but he had received no orders as to accretions, and so, to our infinite joy and entertainment, we found that in manyways it was not only near jungle, it _was_ jungle. I have compared itwith a natural cave. It was also like a fallen jungle-log, and we someof the small folk who shared its dark recesses with hosts of others. Through the air, on wings of skin or feathers or tissue membrane;crawling or leaping by night; burrowing underground; gnawing upthrough the great supporting posts; swarming up the bamboos and alongthe pliant curving stems to drop quietly on the shingled roof;--thushad the jungle-life come past Hope's unseeing eyes and found thebungalow worthy residence. 

The bats were with us from first to last. We exterminated one colonywhich spent its inverted days clustered over the center of our supplychamber, but others came immediately and disputed the ownership of thedark room. Little chaps with great ears and nose-tissue of sensitiveskin, spent the night beneath my shelves and chairs, and even my cot. They hunted at dusk and again at dawn, slept in my room and vanishedin the day. Even for bats they were ferocious, and whenever I caughtone in a butterfly-net, he went into paroxysms of rage, squealing inangry passion, striving to bite my hand and, failing that, chewingvainly on his own long fingers and arms. Their teeth were wonderfullyintricate and seemed adapted for some very special diet, althoughbeetles seemed to satisfy those which I caught. For once, thesystematist had labeled them opportunely, and we never called themanything but _Furipterus horrens_. 

In the evening, great bats as large as small herons swept down thelong front gallery where we worked, gleaning as they went; but thevampires were long in coming, and for months we neither saw nor heardof one. Then they attacked our servants, and we took heart, and nightafter night exposed our toes, as conventionally accepted vampire-bait. When at last they found that the color of our skins was no criterionof dilution of blood, they came in crowds. For three nights they sweptabout us with hardly a whisper of wings, and accepted either toe orelbow or finger, or all three, and the cots and floor in the morninglooked like an emergency hospital behind an active front. In spite ofevery attempt at keeping awake, we dropped off to sleep before thebats had begun, and did not waken until they left. We ascertained, however, that there was no truth in the belief that they hovered orkept fanning with their wings. Instead, they settled on the personwith an appreciable flop and then crawled to the desired spot. 

One night I made a special effort and, with bared arm, prepared for along vigil. In a few minutes bats began to fan my face, the wingsalmost brushing, but never quite touching my skin. I could distinguishthe difference between the smaller and the larger, the latter having adeeper swish, deeper and longer drawn-out. Their voices were so highand shrill that the singing of the jungle crickets seemed almostcontralto in comparison. Finally, I began to feel myself the focus ofone or more of these winged weasels. The swishes became more frequent, the returnings almost doubling on their track. Now and then a smallbody touched the sheet for an instant, and then, with a soft littletap, a vampire alighted on my chest. I was half sitting up, yet Icould not see him, for I had found that the least hint of light endedany possibility of a visit. I breathed as quietly as I could, and madesure that both hands were clear. For a long time there was nomovement, and the renewed swishes made me suspect that the bat hadagain taken flight. Not until I felt a tickling on my wrist did I knowthat my visitor had shifted and, unerringly, was making for the armwhich I had exposed. Slowly it crept forward, but I hardly felt thepushing of the feet and pulling of the thumbs as it crawled along. IfI had been asleep, I should not have awakened. It continued up myforearm and came to rest at my elbow. Here another long period ofrest, and then several short, quick shifts of body. With my wholeattention concentrated on my elbow, I began to imagine varioussensations as my mind pictured the long, lancet tooth sinking deepinto the skin, and the blood pumping up. I even began to feel the hotrush of my vital fluid over my arm, and then found that I had dozedfor a moment and that all my sensations were imaginary. But soon agentle tickling became apparent, and, in spite of putting this out ofmy mind and with increasing doubts as to the bat being still there, the tickling continued. It changed to a tingling, rather pleasant thanotherwise, like the first stage of having one's hand asleep. 

It really seemed as if this were the critical time. Somehow or otherthe vampire was at work with no pain or even inconvenience to me, andnow was the moment to seize him, call for a lantern, and solve hissupersurgical skill, the exact method of this vespertilialanæsthetist. Slowly, very slowly, I lifted the other hand, alwaysthinking of my elbow, so that I might keep all the muscles relaxed. Very slowly it approached, and with as swift a motion as I couldachieve, I grasped at the vampire. I felt a touch of fur and I grippeda struggling, skinny wing; there came a single nip of teeth, and thewing-tip slipped through my fingers. I could detect no trace of bloodby feeling, so turned over and went to sleep. In the morning I found atiny scratch, with the skin barely broken; and, heartily disappointed, I realized that my tickling and tingling had been the preliminarysymptoms of the operation. 

Marvelous moths which slipped into the bungalow like shadows; pettarantulas; golden-eyed gongasocka geckos; automatic, house-cleaningants; opossums large and small; tiny lizards who had tongues in placeof eyelids; wasps who had doorsteps and watched the passing from theirwindows;--all these were intimates of my laboratory table, whoseriches must be spread elsewhere; but the sounds of the bungalow werecommon to the whole structure. 

One of the first things I noticed, as I lay on my cot, was the newvoice of the wind at night. Now and then I caught a familiarsound, --faint, but not to be forgotten, --the clattering of palmfronds. But this came from Boom-boom Point, fifty yards away (an outjutting of rocks where we had secured our first giant catfish of thatname). The steady rhythm of sound which rose and fell with the breezeand sifted into my window with the moonbeams, was the gentlest_shussssss_ing, a fine whispering, a veritable fern of a sound, highand crisp and wholly apart from the moaning around the eaves whicharose at stronger gusts. It brought to mind the steep mountain-sidesof Pahang, and windy nights which presaged great storms in high passesof Yunnan. 

But these wonder times lived only through memory and were misted withintervening years, while it came upon me during early nights, againand again, that this was Now, and that into the hour-glass neck of Nowwas headed a maelstrom of untold riches of the Future--minutes andhours and sapphire days ahead---a Now which was wholly unconcernedwith leagues and liquor, with strikes and salaries. So I turned overwith the peace which passes all telling--the forecast of delving intothe private affairs of birds and monkeys, of great butterflies andstrange frogs and flowers. The seeping wind had led my mind on and onfrom memory and distant sorrows to thoughts of the joy of labor andlife. 

At half-past five a kiskadee shouted at the top of his lungs from thebamboos, but he probably had a nightmare, for he went to sleep and didnot wake again for half-an-hour. The final swish of a bat's wing cameto my ear, and the light of a fog-dimmed day slowly tempered thedarkness among the dusty beams and rafters. From high overhead asprawling tarantula tossed aside the shriveled remains of his night'sbanquet, the emerald cuirass and empty mahogany helmet of along-horned beetle, which eddied downward and landed upon my sheet. 

Immediately around the bungalow the bamboos held absolute sway, andwhile forming a very tangible link between the roof and the outliersof the jungle, yet no plant could obtain foothold beneath their shade. They withheld light, and the mat of myriads of slender leaves killedoff every sprouting thing. This was of the utmost value to us, providing shade, clear passage to every breeze, and an absolute dearthof flies and mosquitoes. We found that the clumps needed clearing ofold stems, and for two days we indulged in the strangest of weedings. The dead stems were as hard as stone outside, but the ax bit througheasily, and they were so light that we could easily carry enormousones, which made us feel like giants, though, when I thought of themin their true botanical relationship, I dwarfed in imagination asquickly as Alice, to a pigmy tottering under a blade of grass. It waslike a Brobdingnagian game of jack-straws, as the cutting or pryingloose of a single stem often brought several others crashing to earthin unexpected places, keeping us running and dodging to avoid theirterrific impact. The fall of these great masts awakened a roaringswish ending in a hollow rattling, wholly unlike the crash and dullboom of a solid trunk. When we finished with each clump, it stood as aperfect giant bouquet, looking, at a distance, like a tuft of greenfeathery plumes, with the bungalow snuggled beneath as a toadstool isovershadowed by ferns. 

Scores of the homes of small folk were uncovered by our weedingout--wasps, termites, ants, bees, wood-roaches, centipedes; andoccasionally a small snake or great solemn toad came out from thedébris at the roots, the latter blinking and swelling indignantly atthis sudden interruption of his siesta. In a strong wind the stemsbent and swayed, thrashing off every imperfect leaf and sweeping lowacross the roof, with strange scrapings and bamboo mutterings. Butthey hardly ever broke and fell. In the evening, however, and in thenight, after a terrific storm, a sharp, unexpected _rat-tat-tat-tat_, exactly like a machine-gun, would smash in on the silence, and two orthree of the great grasses, which perhaps sheltered Dutchmengenerations ago, would snap and fall. But the Indians and Bovianderswho lived nearby, knew this was no wind, nor yet weakness of stem, butSinclair, who was abroad and who was cutting down the bamboos for hisown secret reasons. He was evil, and it was well to be indoors withall windows closed; but further details were lacking, and we weredriven to clothe this imperfect ghost with history and habits of ourown devising. 

The birds and other inhabitants of the bamboos, were those of the moreopen jungle, --flocks drifting through the clumps, monkeys occasionallyswinging from one to another of the elastic tips, while toucans cameand went. At evening, flocks of parrakeets and great black oriolescame to roost, courting the safety which they had come to associatewith the clearings of human pioneers in the jungle. A box on a bamboostalk drew forth joyous hymns of praise from a pair of littleGod-birds, as the natives call the house-wrens, who straightwaycollected all the grass and feathers in the world, stuffed them intothe tiny chamber, and after a time performed the ever-marvelous featof producing three replicas of themselves from this trash-filled box. The father-parent was one concentrated mite of song, with just enoughfeathers for wings to enable him to pursue caterpillars andgrasshoppers as raw material for the production of more song. He sangat the prospect of a home; then he sang to attract and win a mate;more song at the joy of finding wonderful grass and feathers; againmelody to beguile his mate, patiently giving the hours and days of herbody-warmth in instinct-compelled belief in the future. He sang whilehe took his turn at sitting; then he nearly choked to death trying tosing while stuffing a bug down a nestling's throat; finally, he sangat the end of a perfect nesting season; again, in hopes of persuadinghis mate to repeat it all, and this failing, sang in chorus in thewren quintette--I hoped, in gratitude to us. At least from April toSeptember he sang every day, and if my interpretation beanthropomorphic, why, so much the better for anthropomorphism. At anyrate, before we left, all five wrens sat on a little shrub andimitated the morning stars, and our hearts went out to the littlevirile featherlings, who had lost none of their enthusiasm for life inthis tropical jungle. Their one demand in this great wilderness wasman's presence, being never found in the jungle except in an inhabitedclearing, or, as I have found them, clinging hopefully to thevanishing ruins of a dead Indian's _benab_, waiting and singing inperfect faith, until the jungle had crept over it all and they werecompelled to give up and set out in search of another home, withinsound of human voices. 

Bare as our leaf-carpeted bamboo-glade appeared, yet a select littlecompany found life worth living there. The dry sand beneath the housewas covered with the pits of ant-lions, and as we watched them monthafter month, they seemed to have more in common with the grains ofquartz which composed their cosmos than with the organic world. By dayor night no ant or other edible thing seemed ever to approach or beentrapped; and month after month there was no sign of change to imago. Yet each pit held a fat, enthusiastic inmate, ready at a touch to turnsteam-shovel, battering-ram, bayonet, and gourmand. Among the firstthousand-and-one mysteries of Kartabo I give a place to the source ofnourishment of the sub-bungalow ant-lions. 

Walking one day back of the house, I observed a number of small holes, with a little shining head just visible in each, which vanished at myapproach. Looking closer, I was surprised to find a colony of tropicaldoodle-bugs. Straightway I chose a grass-stem and squatting, beganfishing as I had fished many years ago in the southern states. Soon anibble and then an angry pull, and I jerked out the irate little chap. He had the same naked bumpy body and the fierce head, and when two orthree were put together, they fought blindly and with the ferocity ofbulldogs. 

 * * * * *

To write of pets is as bad taste as to write in diary form, and, besides, I had made up my mind to have no pets on this expedition. They were a great deal of trouble and a source of distraction fromwork while they were alive; and one's heart was wrung and one'sconcentration disturbed at their death. But Kib came one day, broughtby a tiny copper-bronze Indian. He looked at me, touched metentatively with a mobile little paw, and my firm resolution meltedaway. A young coati-mundi cannot sit man-fashion like a bear-cub, noris he as fuzzy as a kitten or as helpless as a puppy, but he has waysof winning to the human heart, past all obstacles. 

The small Indian thought that three shillings would be a fairexchange; but I knew the par value of such stock, and Kib changedhands for three bits. A week later a thousand shillings would haveseemed cheap to his new master. A coati-mundi is a tropical, arborealraccoon of sorts, with a long, ever-wriggling snout, sharp teeth, eyesthat twinkle with humor, and clawed paws which are more skilful thanmany a fingered hand. By the scientists of the world he is addressedas _Nasua nasua nasua_--which lays itself open to the twin ambiguityof stuttering Latin, or the echoes of a Princetonian football yell. The natural histories call him coati-mundi, while the Indian has byfar the best of it, with the ringing, climactic syllables, _Kibihée!_And so, in the case of a being who has received much more than hisshare of vitality, it was altogether fitting to shorten this toKib--Dunsany's giver of life upon the earth. 

My heart's desire is to run on and tell many paragraphs of Kib; butthat, as I have said, would be bad taste, which is one form ofimmorality. For in such things sentiment runs too closely parallel tosentimentality, --moderation becomes maudlinism, --and one enters thecaste of those who tell anecdotes of children, and the latest symptomsof their physical ills. And the deeper one feels the joys offriendship with individual small folk of the jungle, the moredifficult it is to convey them to others. And so it is not of thetropical mammal coati-mundi, nor even of the humorous Kib that Ithink, but of the soul of him galloping up and down his slanting log, of his little inner ego, which changed from a wild thing to one whowould hurl himself from any height or distance into a lap, confidentthat we would save his neck, welcome him, and waste good time playingthe game which he invented, of seeing whether we could touch hislittle cold snout before he hid it beneath his curved arms. 

So, in spite of my resolves, our bamboo groves became the homes ofnumerous little souls of wild folk, whose individuality shone out anddominated the less important incidental casement, whether it happenedto be feathers, or fur, or scales. It is interesting to observe howthe Adam in one comes to the surface in the matter of names for pets. I know exactly the uncomfortable feeling which must have perturbed theheart of that pioneer of nomenclaturists, to be plumped down in themidst of "the greatest aggregation of animals ever assembled" beforethe time of Noah, and to be able to speak of them only as _this_ or_that_, _he_ or _she_. So we felt when inundated by a host of pets. Itis easy to speak of the species by the lawful Latin or Greek name; wemention the specimen on our laboratory table by its commonnatural-history appellation. But the individual who touches our pity, or concern, or affection, demands a special title--usually absurdlyinapt. 

Soon, in the bamboo glade about our bungalow, ten little junglefriends came to live; and to us they will always be Kib and Gawain, George and Gregory, Robert and Grandmother, Raoul and Pansy, Jennieand Jellicoe. 

Gawain was not a double personality--he was an intermittentreincarnation, vibrating between the inorganic and the essence ofvitality. In a reasonable scheme of earthly things he filled theniche of a giant green tree-frog, and one of us seemed to rememberthat the Knight Gawain was enamored of green, and so we dubbed him. For the hours of daylight Gawain preferred the role of a hunched-uppebble of malachite; or if he could find a leaf, he drew eighteenpurple vacuum toes beneath him, veiled his eyes with opalescent lids, and slipped from the mineral to the vegetable kingdom, flattened bymasterly shading which filled the hollows and leveled the bumps; andthe leaf became more of a leaf than it had been before Gawain wasmerged with it. 

Night, or hunger, or the merciless tearing of sleep from his soulwrought magic and transformed him into a glowing, jeweled specter. Hesprouted toes and long legs; he rose and inflated his sleek emeraldfrog-form; his sides blazed forth a mother-of-pearl waist-coat--amyriad mosaics of pink and blue and salmon and mauve; and from nowhereif not from the very depths of his throat, there slowly rose twinglobes, --great eyes, --which stood above the flatness of his head, asmosques above an oriental city. Gone were the neutralizing lids, andin their place, strange upright pupils surrounded with vermilion linesand curves and dots, like characters of ancient illuminated Persianscript. And with these appalling eyes Gawain looked at us, with theseunreal, crimson-flecked globes staring absurdly from an expressionlessemerald mask, he contemplated roaches and small grasshoppers, andcorrectly estimated their distance and activity. We never thought ofdemanding friendship, or a hint of his voice, or common froggishactivities from Gawain. We were content to visit him now and then, toarouse him, and then leave him to disincarnate his vertebral outwardphase into chlorophyll or lifeless stone. To muse upon his courtshipor emotions was impossible. His life had a feeling of sphinx-likeduration--Gawain as a tadpole was unthinkable. He seemed ageless, unreal, wonderfully beautiful, and wholly inexplicable. 

II

A JUNGLE CLEARING

Within six degrees of the Equator, shut in by jungle, on a cloudlessday in mid-August, I found a comfortable seat on a slope of sandy soilsown with grass and weeds in the clearing back of Kartabo laboratory. I was shaded only by a few leaves of a low walnut-like sapling, yetthere was not the slightest hint of oppressive heat. It might havebeen a warm August day in New England or Canada, except for thesoftness of the air. 

In my little cleared glade there was no plant which would be whollyout of place on a New England country hillside. With debotanizedvision I saw foliage of sumach, elm, hickory, peach, and alder, andthe weeds all about were as familiar as those of any New Jerseymeadow. The most abundant flowers were Mazaruni daisies, cheerfullittle pale primroses, and close to me, fairly overhanging the paperas I wrote, was the spindling button-weed, a wanderer from theStates, with its clusters of tiny white blossoms bouqueted in thebracts of its leaves. 

A few yards down the hillside was a clump of real friends--the richgreen leaves of vervain, that humble little weed, sacred in turn tothe Druids, the Romans, and the early Christians, and now broughtinadvertently in some long-past time, in an overseas shipment, andholding its own in this breathing-space of the jungle. I was sointerested by this discovery of a superficial northern flora, that Ibegan to watch for other forms of temperate-appearing life, and for along time my ear found nothing out of harmony with the plants. The lowsteady hum of abundant insects was so constant that it requiredconscious effort to disentangle it from silence. Every few secondsthere arose the cadence of a passing bee or fly, the one low and deep, the other shrill and penetrating. And now, just as I had become whollyabsorbed in this fascinating game, --the kind of game which may at anymoment take a worth-while scientific turn, --it all dimmed and theentire picture shifted and changed. I doubt if any one who has been ata modern battle-front can long sit with closed eyes in a midsummermeadow and not have his blood leap as scene after scene is broughtback to him. Three bees and a fly winging their way past, with therise and fall of their varied hums, were sufficient to renew vividlyfor me the blackness of night over the sticky mud of Souville, and tocloud for a moment the scent of clover and dying grass, with thatterrible sickly sweet odor of human flesh in an old shell-hole. Insuch unexpected ways do we link peace and war--suspending the greatestweights of memory, imagination, and visualization on the slenderestcobwebs of sound, odor, and color. 

But again my bees became but bees--great, jolly, busy yellow-and-blackfellows, who blundered about and squeezed into blossoms many sizes toosmall for them. Cicadas tuned up, clearing their drum-heads, tightening their keys, and at last rousing into the full swing oftheir ecstatic theme. And my relaxed, uncritical mind at presentrecorded no difference between the sound and that which was vibratedfrom northern maples. The tamest bird about me was a bigyellow-breasted white-throated flycatcher, and I had seen thisMelancholy Tyrant, as his technical name describes him, in suchdistant lands that he fitted into the picture without effort. 

White butterflies flitted past, then a yellow one, and finally a realMonarch. In my boy-land, smudgy specimens of this were pinned, earnestly but asymetrically, in cigar-boxes, under the title of_Danais archippus_. At present no reputable entomologist would thinkof calling it other than _Anosia plexippus_, nor should I; but theparticular thrill which it gave to-day was that this self-same speciesshould wander along at this moment to mosaic into my boreal muse. 

After a little time, with only the hum of the bees and the staccatocicadas, a double deceit was perpetrated, one which my sentiment ofthe moment seized upon and rejoiced in, but at which my mind had toconceal a smile and turn its consciousness quickly elsewhere, toprevent an obtrusive reality from dimming this last addition to thepicture. The gentle, unmistakable, velvet warble of a bluebird cameover the hillside, again and again; and so completely absorbed andlulled was I by the gradual obsession of being in the midst of anorthern scene, that the sound caused not the slightest excitement, even internally and mentally. But the sympathetic spirit who wasdirecting this geographic burlesque overplayed, and followed the softcurve of audible wistfulness with an actual bluebird which loopedacross the open space in front. The spell was broken for a moment, andmy subconscious autocrat thrust into realization the instantaneousreport--apparent bluebird call is the note of a small flycatcher andthe momentary vision was not even a mountain bluebird but ared-breasted blue chatterer! So I shut my eyes very quickly andlistened to the soft calls, which alone would have deceived theclosest analyzer of bird songs. And so for a little while longer Istill held my picture intact, a magic scape, a hundred yards squareand an hour long, set in the heart of the Guiana jungle. 

And when at last I had to desert Canada, and relinquish New Jersey, Islipped only a few hundred miles southward. For another twenty minutesI clung to Virginia, for the enforced shift was due to a great Papiliobutterfly which stopped nearby and which I captured with a lucky sweepof my net. My first thought was of the Orange-tree Swallow-tail, _née__Papilio cresphontes_. Then the first lizards appeared, and by nostretch of my willing imagination could I pretend that they werenewts, or fit the little emerald scales into a New England pasture. And so I chose for a time to live again among the Virginianbutterflies and mockingbirds, the wild roses and the jasmine, and theother splendors of memory which a single butterfly had unloosed. 

As I looked about me, I saw the flowers and detected their fragrance;I heard the hum of bees and the contented chirp of well-fed birds; Imarveled at great butterflies flapping so slowly that it seemed as ifthey must have cheated gravitation in some subtle way to win suchlightness and disregard of earth-pull. I heard no ugly murmur of longhours and low wages; the closest scrutiny revealed no strikes orinternal clamorings about wrongs; and I unconsciously relaxed andbreathed more deeply at the thought of this nature world, moving sosmoothly, with directness and simplicity as apparently achievedideals. 

 * * * * *

Then I ceased this superficial glance and looked deeper, and withoutmoralizing or dragging in far-fetched similes or warnings, tried tocomprehend one fundamental reality in wild nature--the universalacceptance of opportunity. From this angle it is quite unimportantwhether one believes in vitalism (which is vitiating to our "will toprove"), or in mechanism (whose name itself is a symbol of ignorance, or deficient vocabulary, or both). Evolution has left no chink orcrevice unfilled, unoccupied, no probability untried, no possibilityunachieved. 

The nearest weed suggested this trend of thought and provided all Icould desire of examples; but the thrill of discovery and the artisticdelight threatened to disturb for the time my solemn application ofthese ponderous truisms. The weed alongside had had a prosperous life, and its leaves were fortunate in the unadulterated sun and rain towhich they had access. At the summit all was focusing for theconsummation of existence: the little blossoms would soon open andhave their one chance. To all the winds of heaven they would fling outwave upon wave of delicate odor, besides enlisting a subtle form ofvibration and refusing to absorb the pink light--thereby enhancing theprospects of insect visitors, on whose coming the very existence ofthis race of weeds depended. 

Every leaf showed signs of attack: scallops cut out, holes bored, stains of fungi, wreaths of moss, and the insidious mazes ofleaf-miners. But, like an old-fashioned ship of the line which wins toport with the remnants of shot-ridden sails, the plant had paid tollbravely, although unable to defend itself or protect its tissues; andif I did not now destroy it, which I should assuredly not do, thisweed would justify its place as a worthy link in the chain ofnumberless generations, past and to come. 

More complex, clever, subtle methods of attack transcended those ofthe mere devourer of leaf-tissue, as radically as an inventor of mostintricate instruments differs from the plodding tiller of the soil. Inthe center of one leaf, less disfigured than some of its fellows, Iperceived four tiny ivory spheres, a dozen of which might restcomfortably within the length of an inch. To my eye they looked quitesmooth, although a steady oblique gaze revealed hints of concentriclines. Before the times of Leeuwenhoek I should perhaps have beenunable to see more than this, although, as a matter of fact, in thosehappy-go-lucky days my ancestors would doubtless have trounced mesoundly for wasting my time on such useless and ungodly things asbutterfly eggs. I thought of the coming night when I should sit andstrain with all my might, striving, without the use of my powerfulstereos, to separate from translucent mist of gases the denser nucleusof the mighty cosmos in Andromeda. And I alternately bemoaned myhuman limitation of vision, and rejoiced that I could focus clearly, both upon my butterfly eggs a foot away, and upon the spiral nebulaswinging through the ether perhaps four hundred and fifty light-yearsfrom the earth. 

I unswung my pocket-lens, --the infant of the microscope, --and my wholebeing followed my eyes; the trees and sky were eclipsed, and I hoveredin mid-air over four glistening Mars-like planets--seamed withradiating canals, half in shadow from the slanting sunlight, andsilhouetted against pure emerald. The sculpturing was exquisite. Nearthe north poles which pointed obliquely in my direction, the linesbroke up into beads, and the edges of these were frilled andscalloped; and here again my vision failed and demanded still strongerbinoculars. Here was indeed complexity: a butterfly, one of thoseblack beauties, splashed with jasper and beryl, hovering nearby, withtaste only for liquid nectar, yet choosing a little weed devoid offlower or fruit on which to deposit her quota of eggs. She neitherturned to look at their beauties nor trusted another batch to thisplant. Somehow, someway, her caterpillar wormhood had carried, throughthe mummified chrysalid and the reincarnation of her present form, knowledge of an earlier, infinitely coarser diet. 

Together with the pure artistic joy which was stirred at the sight ofthese tiny ornate globes, there was aroused a realization ofcomplexity, of helpless, ignorant achievement; the butterfly blindlypausing in her flower-to-flower fluttering--a pause as momentous toher race as that of the slow daily and monthly progress of the weed'sstruggle to fruition. 

I took a final glance at the eggs before returning to my own largerworld, and I detected a new complication, one which left me withfeelings too involved for calm scientific contemplation. As if aMartian should suddenly become visible to an astronomer, I found thatone of the egg planets was inhabited. Perched upon the summit--quitenear the north pole--was an insect, a wasp, much smaller than the eggitself. And as I looked, I saw it at the climax of its diminutivelife; for it reared up, resting on the tips of two legs and theiridescent wings, and sunk its ovipositor deep into the crystallinesurface. As I watched, an egg was deposited, about the latitude of NewYork, and with a tremor the tiny wasp withdrew its instrument andrested. 

On the same leaf were casually blown specks of dust, larger than thequartette of eggs. To the plant the cluster weighed nothing, meantnothing more than the dust. Yet a moment before they contained thelatent power of great harm to the future growth of the weed--fourlusty caterpillars would work from leaf to leaf with a rapidity anddestructiveness which might, even at the last, have sapped thematuring seeds. Now, on a smaller scale, but still within the realm ofinsect life, all was changed--the plant was safe once more and nocaterpillars would emerge. For the wasp went from sphere to sphere andinoculated every one with the promise of its kind. The plant bentslightly in a breath of wind, and knew nothing; the butterfly was faraway to my left, deep-drinking in a cluster of yellow cassia; the wasphad already forgotten its achievement, and I alone--an outsider, aninterloper--observed, correlated, realized, appreciated, and--at thelast--remained as completely ignorant as the actors themselves of thereal driving force, of the certain beginning, of the inevitable end. Only a momentary cross-section was vouchsafed, and a wonder and adesire to know fanned a little hotter. 

I had far from finished with my weed: for besides the cuts and tearsand disfigurements of the leaves, I saw a score or more of curiousberry-like or acorn-like growths, springing from both leaf and stem. Iknew, of course, that they were insect-galls, but never before hadthey meant quite so much, or fitted in so well as a significantphenomenon in the nexus of entangling relationships between the weedand its environment. This visitor, also a minute wasp of sorts, neither bit nor cut the leaves, but quietly slipped a tiny egg hereand there into the leaf-tissue. 

And this was only the beginning of complexity. For with the quickeningof the larva came a reaction on the part of the plant, which, indefense, set up a greatly accelerated growth about the young insect. This might have taken the form of some distorted or deformed plantorgan--a cluster of leaves, a fruit or berry or tuft of hairs, whollyunlike the characters of the plant itself. My weed was studded withwhat might well have been normal seed-fruits, were they not provednightmares of berries, awful pseudo-fruits sprouting from horridlyimpossible places. And this excess of energy, expressed in tumorousoutgrowths, was all vitally useful to the grub--just as the skilfuljiu-jitsu wrestler accomplishes his purpose with the aid of hisopponent's strength. The insect and plant were, however, far moreintricately related than any two human competitors: for the grub inturn required the continued health and strength of the plant for itsexistence; and when I plucked a leaf, I knew I had doomed all thehidden insects living within its substance. 

The galls at my hand simulated little acorns, dull greenish in color, matching the leaf-surface on which they rested, and rising in a sharppoint. I cut one through and, when wearied and fretted with theresponsibilities of independent existence, I know I shall often recalland envy my grub in his palatial parasitic home. Outside came a ratherhard, brown protective sheath; then the main body of the gall, of firmand dense tissue; and finally, at the heart, like the Queen's chamberin Cheops, the irregular little dwelling-place of the grub. This wasnot empty and barren; but the blackness and silence of this vegetablechamber, this architecture fashioned by the strangest of builders forthe most remarkable of tenants, was filled with a nap of long, crystalline hairs or threads like the spun-glass candy in ourChristmas sweetshops--white at the base and shading from pale salmonto the deepest of pinks. This exquisite tapestry, whose beauties werenormally forever hidden as well from the blind grub as from theoutside world, was the ambrosia all unwittingly provided by theantagonism of the plant; the nutrition of resentment, the food ofdefiance; and day by day the grub gradually ate his way from one endto the other of his suite, laying a normal, healthful physicalfoundation for his future aerial activities. 

The natural history of galls is full of romance and strangeunrealities, but to-day it meant to me only a renewed instance of anopportunity seized and made the most of; the success of the indirect, the unreasonable--the long chance which so few of us humans arewilling to take, although the reward is a perpetual enthusiasm for thehappening of the moment, and the honest gambler's joy for the future. How much more desirable to acquire merit as a footless grub in theheart of a home, erected and precariously nourished by a worthyopponent, with a future of unnumbered possibilities, than to be aqueen-mother in nest or hive--cared-for, fed, and cleansed by a hostof slaves, but with less prospect of change or of adventure than anaverage toadstool. 

 * * * * *

Thus I sat for a long time, lulled by similitudes of northern plantsand bees and birds, and then gently shifted southward a few hundredmiles, the transition being smooth and unabrupt. With equal gentlenessthe dead calm stirred slightly and exhaled the merest ghost of abreeze; it seemed as if the air was hardly in motion, but onlyrestless: the wings of the bees and the flycatcher might well havecaused it. But, judged by the sequence of events, it was the almostimperceptible signal given by some great Jungle Spirit, who had tiredof playing with my dreams and pleasant fancies of northern life, andnow called upon her legions to disillusion me. And the response wasimmediate. Three great shells burst at my very feet, --one of sound, one of color, and the third of both plus numbers, --and from that timeon, tropical life was dominant whichever way I looked. That is the waywith the wilderness, and especially the tropical wilderness--tosurprise one in the very field with which one is most familiar. Whilein my own estimation my chief profession is ignorance, yet I sign mypassport applications and my jury evasions as Ornithologist. And nowthis playful Spirit of the Jungle permitted me to meditate cheerfullyon my ability to compare the faunas of New York and Guiana, and thenproceeded to startle me with three salvos of birds, first physicallyand then emotionally. 

From the monotone of under-world sounds a strange little raspingdetached itself, a reiterated, subdued scraping or picking. It carriedmy mind instantly to the throbbing theme of the Niebelungs, onomatopoetic of the little hammers forever busy in their undergroundwork. I circled a small bush at my side, and found that the sound camefrom one of the branches near the top; so with my glasses I began asystematic search. It was at this propitious moment, when I wasrelaxed in every muscle, steeped in the quiet of this hillside, andkeen on discovering the beetle, that the first shell arrived. If I hadbeen less absorbed I might have heard some distant chattering orcalling, but this time it was as if a Spad had shut off its power, volplaned, kept ahead of its own sound waves, and bombed me. All thatactually happened was that a band of little parrakeets flew down andalighted nearby. When I discovered this, it seemed a disconcertinganti-climax, just as one can make the bravest man who has been underrifle-fire flinch by spinning a match swiftly past his ear. 

I have heard this sound of parrakeet's wings, when the birds werealighting nearby, half a dozen times; but after half a hundred I shallduck just as spontaneously, and for a few seconds stand just asimmobile with astonishment. From a volcano I expect deep and sinistersounds; when I watch great breakers I would marvel only if theaccompanying roar were absent; but on a calm sunny August day I do notexpect a noise which, for suddenness and startling character, can becompared only with a tremendous flash of lightning. Imagine awonderful tapestry of strong ancient stuff, which had only been woven, never torn, and think of this suddenly ripped from top to bottom bysome sinister, irresistible force. 

In the instant that the sound began, it ceased; there was no echo, nobell-like sustained overtones; both ends were buried in silence. As itcame to-day it was a high tearing crash which shattered silence as aVery light destroys darkness; and at its cessation I looked up andsaw twenty little green figures gazing intently down at me, from sosmall a sapling that their addition almost doubled the foliage. Thattheir small wings could wring such a sound from the fabric of the airwas unbelievable. At my first movement, the flock leaped forth, and iftheir wings made even a rustle, it was wholly drowned in the chorus ofchattering cries which poured forth unceasingly as the little bandswept up and around the sky circle. As an alighting morpho butterflydazzles the eyes with a final flash of his blazing azure beforevanishing behind the leaves and fungi of his lower surface, soparrakeets change from screaming motes in the heavens to silence, andthen to a hurtling, roaring boomerang, whose amazing unexpectednesswould distract the most dangerous eyes from the little motionlessleaf-figures in a neighboring treetop. 

When I sat down again, the whole feeling of the hillside was changed. I was aware that my weed was a northern weed only in appearance, and Ishould not have been surprised to see my bees change to flies or mylizards to snakes--tropical beings have a way of doing such things. 

The next phenomenon was color, --unreal, living pigment, --which seemedto appeal to more than one sense, and which satisfied, as a coolingdrink or a rare, delicious fragrance satisfies. A medium-sized, stockybird flew with steady wing-beats over the jungle, in black silhouetteagainst the sky, and swung up to an outstanding giant tree whichpartly overhung the edge of my clearing. The instant it passed thezone of green, it flashed out brilliant turquoise, and in the sameinstant I recognized it and reached for my gun. Before I retrieved thebird, a second, dull and dark-feathered, flew from the tree. I hadwatched it for some time, but now, as it passed over, I saw no yellowand knew it too was of real scientific interest to me; and with thesecond barrel I secured it. Picking up my first bird, I found that itwas not turquoise, but beryl; and a few minutes later I was certainthat it was aquamarine; on my way home another glance showed the colorof forget-me-nots on its plumage, and as I looked at it on my table, it was Nile green. Yet the feathers were painted in flat color, without especial sheen or iridescence, and when I finally analyzed it, I found it to be a delicate calamine blue. It actually had theappearance of a too strong color, as when a glistening surfacereflects the sun. From beak to tail it threw off this glowing hue, except for its chin and throat, which were a limpid amaranth purple;and the effect on the excited rods and cones in one's eyes was likethe power of great music or some majestic passage in the Bible. You, who think my similes are overdone, search out in the nearest museumthe dustiest of purple-throated cotingas, --_Cotinga cayana, _--andthen, instead, berate me for inadequacy. 

Sheer color alone is powerful enough, but when heightened by contrast, it becomes still more effective, and I seemed to have secured, withtwo barrels, a cotinga and its shadow. The latter was also afull-grown male cotinga, known to a few people in this world as thedark-breasted mourner (_Lipaugus simplex_). In general shape and formit was not unlike its cousin, but in color it was its shadow, itssilhouette. Not a feather upon head or body, wings or tail showed ahint of warmth, only a dull uniform gray; an ash of a bird, living inthe same warm sunlight, wet by the same rain, feeding on much the samefood, and claiming relationship with a blazing-feathered turquoise. There is some very exact and very absorbing reason for all this, andfor it I search with fervor, but with little success. But we may becertain that the causes of this and of the host of other unreasonablerealities which fill the path of the evolutionist with never-quenchedenthusiasm, will extend far beyond the colors of two tropical birds. They will have something to do with flowers and with brightbutterflies, and we shall know why our "favorite color" is more than awhim, and why the Greeks may not have been able to distinguish thefull gamut of our spectrum, and why rainbows are so narrow to our eyesin comparison to what they might be. 

Finally, there was thrown aside all finesse, all delicacy ofpresentation, and the last lingering feeling of temperate life andnature was erased. From now on there was no confusion of zones, noconcessions, no mental palimpsest of resolving images. The spatial, the temporal, --the hillside, the passing seconds, --the vibrations andmaterial atoms stimulating my five senses, all were tropical, quickened with the unbelievable vitality of equatorial life. Arustling came to my ears, although the breeze was still little morethan a sensation of coolness. Then a deep whirr sounded overhead, andanother, and another, and with a rush a dozen great toucans were allabout me. Monstrous beaks, parodies in pastels of unheard-of bluesand greens, breasts which glowed like mirrored suns, --orange overlaidupon blinding yellow, --and at every flick of the tail a trenchantflash of intense scarlet. All these colors set in frames of jet-blackplumage, and suddenly hurled through blue sky and green foliage, madethe hillside a brilliant moving kaleidoscope. 

Some flew straight over, with several quick flaps, then a smoothglide, flaps and glide. A few banked sharply at sight of me, andwheeled to right or left. Others alighted and craned their necks insuspicion; but all sooner or later disappeared eastward in thedirection of a mighty jungle tree just bursting into a myriad ofberries. They were sulphur-breasted toucans, and they were silent, heralded only by the sound of their wings and the crash of theirpigments. I can think of no other assemblage of jungle creatures morefitted to impress one with the prodigality of tropical nature. Fouryears before, we set ourselves to work to discover the first eggs andyoung of toucans, and after weeks of heartbreaking labor anddisappointments we succeeded. Out of the five species of toucansliving in this part of Guiana we found the nests of four, and the onewhich eluded us was the big sulphur-breasted fellow. I remembered sovividly the painstaking care with which, week after week, we and ourIndians tramped the jungle for miles, --through swamps and over rollinghills, --at last having to admit failure; and now I sat and watchedthirty, forty, fifty of the splendid birds whirr past. As the last ofthe fifty-four flew on to their feast of berries, I recalled withdifficulty my faded visions of northern birds. 

And so ended, as in the great finale of a pyrotechnic display, my twohours on a hillside clearing. I can neither enliven it with astartling escape, nor add a thrill of danger, without using as many"ifs" as would be needed to make a Jersey meadow untenable. Forexample, _if_ I had fallen over backwards and been powerless to riseor move, I should have been killed within half an hour, for a straycolumn of army ants was passing within a yard of me, and death wouldawait any helpless being falling across their path. But by searchingout a copperhead and imitating Cleopatra, or with patience andpersistence devouring every toadstool, the same result could beachieved in our home-town orchard. When on the march, the army antsare as innocuous at two inches as at two miles. Had I sat where I wasfor days and for nights, my chief danger would have been demise fromsheer chagrin at my inability to grasp the deeper significance of lifeand its earthly activities. 

III

THE HOME TOWN OF THE ARMY ANTS

From uniform to civilian clothes is a change transcending merealteration of stuffs and buttons. It is scarcely less sweeping thanthe shift from civilian clothes to bathing-suit, which so oftencompels us to concentrate on remembered mental attributes, to avoiddemanding a renewed introduction to estranged personality. In the homelife of the average soldier, the relaxation from sustained tension andconscious routine results in a gentleness and quietness of mood forwhich warrior nations are especially remembered. 

Army ants have no insignia to lay aside, and their swords are toofirmly hafted in their own beings to be hung up as post-bellum muraldecorations, or--as is done only in poster-land--metamorphosed intopruning-hooks and plowshares. 

I sat at my laboratory table at Kartabo, and looked down river to thepink roof of Kalacoon, and my mind went back to the shambles of PitNumber Five. [1] I was wondering whether I should ever see the armyants in any guise other than that of scouting, battling searchers forliving prey, when a voice of the jungle seemed to hear my unexpressedwish. The sharp, high notes of white-fronted antbirds--thosewhite-crested watchers of the ants--came to my ears, and I left mytable and followed up the sound. Physically, I merely walked aroundthe bungalow and approached the edge of the jungle at a point where wehad erected a small outhouse a day or two before. But this two hundredfeet might just as well have been a single step through quicksilver, hand in hand with Alice, for it took me from a world of hyoids andsyrinxes, of vials and lenses and clean-smelling xylol, to the home ofthe army ants. 

[Footnote 1: See _Jungle Peace_, p. 211. ]

The antbirds were chirping and hopping about on the very edge of thejungle, but I did not have to go that far. As I passed the doorlessentrance of the outhouse I looked up, and there was an immense mass ofsome strange material suspended in the upper corner. It looked likestringy, chocolate-colored tow, studded with hundreds of tiny ivorybuttons. I came closer and looked carefully at this mushroom growthwhich had appeared in a single night, and it was then that my eyesbegan to perceive and my mind to record, things that my reasonbesought me to reject. Such phenomena were all right in a dream, orone might imagine them and tell them to children on one's knee, withwind in the eaves--wild tales to be laughed at and forgotten. But thiswas daylight and I was a scientist; my eyes were in excellent order, and my mind rested after a dreamless sleep; so I had to record what Isaw in that little outhouse. 

This chocolate-colored mass with its myriad ivory dots was the home, the nest, the hearth, the nursery, the bridal suite, the kitchen, thebed and board of the army ants. It was the focus of all the lines andfiles which ravaged the jungle for food, of the battalions whichattacked every living creature in their path, of the unnumbered rankand file which made them known to every Indian, to every inhabitant ofthese vast jungles. 

Louis Quatorze once said, "_L'Etat, c'est moi!_" but this figure ofspeech becomes an empty, meaningless phrase beside what an army antcould boast, --"_La maison, c'est moi!_" Every rafter, beam, stringer, window-frame and door-frame, hall-way, room, ceiling, wall and floor, foundation, superstructure and roof, all were ants--living ants, distorted by stress, crowded into the dense walls, spread out towidest stretch across tie-spaces. I had thought it marvelous when Isaw them arrange themselves as bridges, walks, handrails, buttresses, and sign-boards along the columns; but this new absorption ofenvironment, this usurpation of wood and stone, this insinuation ofthemselves into the province of the inorganic world, was almost tooastounding to credit. 

All along the upper rim the sustaining structure was more distinctlyvisible than elsewhere. Here was a maze of taut brown threadsstretching in places across a span of six inches, with here and therea tiny knot. These were actually tie-strings of living ants, theirlegs stretched almost to the breaking-point, their bodies theinconspicuous knots or nodes. Even at rest and at home, the army antsare always prepared, for every quiescent individual in the swarm wasstanding as erect as possible, with jaws widespread and ready, whetherthe great curved mahogany scimitars of the soldiers, or the littleblack daggers of the smaller workers. And with no eyelids to close, and eyes which were themselves a mockery, the nerve shriveling andnever reaching the brain, what could sleep mean to them? Wrapped everin an impenetrable cloak of darkness and silence, life was yet onegreat activity, directed, ordered, commanded by scent and odor alone. Hour after hour, as I sat close to the nest, I was aware of this odor, sometimes subtle, again wafted in strong successive waves. It wasmusty, like something sweet which had begun to mold; not unpleasant, but very difficult to describe; and in vain I strove to realize theimportance of this faint essence--taking the place of sound, oflanguage, of color, of motion, of form. 

I recovered quickly from my first rapt realization, for a dozen antshad lost no time in ascending my shoes, and, as if at a preconcertedsignal, all simultaneously sank their jaws into my person. Thusstrongly recalled to the realities of life, I realized the opportunitythat was offered and planned for my observation. No living thing couldlong remain motionless within the sphere of influence of thesesix-legged Boches, and yet I intended to spend days in closeproximity. There was no place to hang a hammock, no overhanging treefrom which I might suspend myself spider-wise. So I sent Sam for anordinary chair, four tin cans, and a bottle of disinfectant. I filledthe tins with the tarry fluid, and in four carefully timed rushes Iplaced the tins in a chair-leg square. The fifth time I put the chairin place beneath the nest, but I had misjudged my distances and had toretreat with only two tins in place. Another effort, with Spartan-likedisregard of the fiery bites, and my haven was ready. I hung a bag ofvials, notebook, and lens on the chairback, and, with a final rush, climbed on the seat and curled up as comfortably as possible. 

All around the tins, swarming to the very edge of the liquid, were theangry hosts. Close to my face were the lines ascending and descending, while just above me were hundreds of thousands, a bushel-basket ofarmy ants, with only the strength of their threadlike legs assuspension cables. It took some time to get used to my environment, and from first to last I was never wholly relaxed, or quiteunconscious of what would happen if a chair-leg broke, or a bamboofell across the outhouse. 

I swiveled round on the chair-seat and counted eight lines of armyants on the ground, converging to the post at my elbow. Each was fouror five ranks wide, and the eight lines occasionally divided orcoalesced, like a nexus of capillaries. There was a wide expanse ofsand and clay, and no apparent reason why the various lines offoragers should not approach the nest in a single large column. Thedividing and redividing showed well how completely free were thecolumns from any individual dominance. There was no control byspecific individuals or soldiers, but, the general route onceestablished, the governing factor was the odor of contact. 

The law to pass where others have passed is immutable, but freedom ofaction or individual desire dies with the malleable, plastic ends ofthe foraging columns. Again and again came to mind the comparison ofthe entire colony or army with a single organism; and now the home, the nesting swarm, the focus of central control, seemed like the bodyof this strange amorphous organism--housing the spirit of the army. One thinks of a column of foragers as a tendril with only the tipsensitive and growing and moving, while the corpuscle-like individualants are driven in the current of blind instinct to and fro, on theirchemical errands. And then this whole theory, this most vivid simile, is quite upset by the sights that I watch in the suburbs of this anthome!

The columns were most excellent barometers, and their reaction topassing showers was invariable. The clay surface held water, and aftereach downfall the pools would be higher, and the contour of the littleregion altered. At the first few drops, all the ants would hasten, thethrobbing corpuscles speeding up. Then, as the rain came down heavier, the column melted away, those near each end hurrying to shelter andthose in the center crawling beneath fallen leaves and bits of clodand sticks. A moment before, hundreds of ants were trudging around atiny pool, the water lined with ant handrails, and in shallow places, veritable formicine pontoons, --large ants which stood up to theirbodies in water, with the booty-laden host passing over them. Now, allhad vanished, leaving only a bare expanse of splashing drops and wetclay. The sun broke through and the residue rain tinkled from thebamboos. 

As gradually as the growth of the rainbow above the jungle, the linesreformed themselves. Scouts crept from the jungle-edge at one side, and from the post at my end, and felt their way, fan-wise, over therain-scoured surface; for the odor, which was both sight and sound tothese ants, had been washed away--a more serious handicap than merechange in contour. Swiftly the wandering individuals found theirbearings again. There was deep water where dry land had been, but, asif by long-planned study of the work of sappers and engineers, newpontoon bridges were thrown across, washouts filled in, new cliffsexplored, and easy grades established; and by the time the bamboosceased their own private after-shower, the columns were again runningsmoothly, battalions of eager light infantry hastening out to battle, and equal hosts of loot-laden warriors hurrying toward the home nest. Four minutes was the average time taken to reform a column across theten feet of open clay, with all the road-making and engineering featswhich I have mentioned, on the part of ants who had never been overthis new route before. 

Leaning forward within a few inches of the post, I lost all sense ofproportion, forgot my awkward human size, and with a new perspectivebecame an equal of the ants, looking on, watching every passer-bywith interest, straining with the bearers of the heavy loads, andbreathing more easily when the last obstacle was overcome and homeattained. For a period I plucked out every bit of good-sized booty andfound that almost all were portions of scorpions from far-distant deadlogs in the jungle, creatures whose strength and poisonous stingsavailed nothing against the attacks of these fierce ants. The loadswere adjusted equably, the larger pieces carried by the big, white-headed workers, while the smaller ants transported small eggsand larvæ. Often, when a great mandibled soldier had hold of someinsect, he would have five or six tiny workers surrounding him, eachgrasping any projecting part of the loot, as if they did not trust himin this menial capacity, --as an anxious mother would watch withdoubtful confidence a big policeman wheeling her baby across a crowdedstreet. These workers were often diminutive Marcelines, hinderingrather than aiding in the progress. But in every phase of activity ofthese ants there was not an ounce of intentionally lost power, or amoment of time wilfully gone to waste. What a commentary onBolshevism!

Now that I had the opportunity of quietly watching the long, hurryingcolumns, I came hour by hour to feel a greater intimacy, a deeperenthusiasm for their vigor of existence, their unfailing life at thehighest point of possibility of achievement. In every direction myformer desultory observations were discounted by still greateraccomplishments. Elsewhere I have recorded the average speed as twoand a half feet in ten seconds, estimating this as a mile in three anda half hours. An observant colonel in the American army has laid baremy congenitally hopeless mathematical inaccuracy, and corrected thisto five hours and fifty-two seconds. Now, however, I established awholly new record for the straight-away dash for home of the armyants. With the handicap of gravity pulling them down, the ants, bothladen and unburdened, averaged ten feet in twenty seconds, as theyraced up the post. I have now called in an artist and an astronomer toverify my results, these two being the only living beings withinhailing distance as I write, except a baby red howling monkey curledup in my lap, and a toucan, sloth, and green boa, beyond my laboratorytable. Our results are identical, and I can safely announce that theamateur record for speed of army ants is equivalent to a mile in twohours and fifty-six seconds; and this when handicapped by gravity andburdens of food, but with the incentive of approaching the end oftheir long journey. 

As once before, I accidentally disabled a big worker that I wasrobbing of his load, and his entire abdomen rolled down a slope anddisappeared. Hours later in the afternoon, I was summoned to view thesame soldier, unconcernedly making his way along an outward-boundcolumn, guarding it as carefully as if he had not lost the major partof his anatomy. His mandibles were ready, and the only difference thatI could see was that he could make better speed than others of hiscaste. That night he joined the general assemblage of cripples quietlyawaiting death, halfway up to the nest. 

I know of no highway in the world which surpasses that of a big columnof army ants in exciting happenings, although I usually had thefeeling which inspired Kim as he watched the Great White Road, ofunderstanding so little of all that was going on. Early in the morningthere were only outgoing hosts; but soon eddies were seen in the swiftcurrent, vortexes made by a single ant here and there forcing its wayagainst the stream. Unlike penguins and human beings, army ants haveno rule of the road as to right and left, and there is no lessening ofpace or turning aside for a heavily laden drogher. Their blindnesscaused them to bump squarely into every individual, often sending loadand carrier tumbling to the bottom of a vertical path. Anotherconstant loss of energy was a large cockroach leg, or scorpionsegment, carried by several ants. Their insistence on trying to carryeverything beneath their bodies caused all sorts of comical mishaps. When such a large piece of booty appeared, it was too much of atemptation, and a dozen outgoing ants would rush up and seize hold fora moment, the consequent pulling in all directions reducing progressat once to zero. 

Until late afternoon few ants returned without carrying their bit. Theexceptions were the cripples, which were numerous and very pitiful. From such fierce strenuousness, such virile activity, as unending aselemental processes, it seemed a very terrible drop to disability, tothe utilizing of every atom of remaining strength to return to thetemporary home nest--that instinct which drives so many creatures tothe same homing, at the approach of death. 

Even in their helplessness they were wonderful. To see a bigblack-headed worker struggling up a post with five short stumps andonly one good hind leg, was a lesson in achieving the impossible. Ihave never seen even a suspicion of aid given to any cripple, nomatter how slight or how complete the disability; but frequently astrange thing occurred, which I have often noticed but can neverexplain. One army ant would carry another, perhaps of its own size andcaste, just as if it were a bit of dead provender; and I alwayswondered if cannibalism was to be added to their habits. I wouldcapture both, and the minute they were in the vial, the dead ant wouldcome to life, and with equal vigor and fury both would rush abouttheir prison, seeking to escape, becoming indistinguishable in thetwinkling of an eye. 

Very rarely an ant stopped and attempted to clean another which hadbecome partly disabled through an accumulation of gummy sap or otherencumbering substance. But when a leg or other organ was broken ormissing, the odor of the ant-blood seemed to arouse only suspicionand to banish sympathy, and after a few casual wavings of antennæ, all passed by on the other side. Not only this, but the unfortunateswere actually in danger of attack within the very lines of traffic ofthe legionaries. Several times I noticed small rove-beetlesaccompanying the ants, who paid little attention to them. Whenever anant became suspicious and approached with a raised-eyebrow gesture ofantennæ, the beetles turned their backs quickly and raised threateningtails. But I did not suspect the vampire or thug-like character ofthese guests--tolerated where any other insect would have been torn topieces at once. A large crippled worker, hobbling along, had slipped alittle away from the main line, when I was astonished to see tworove-beetles rush at him and bite him viciously, a third coming up atonce and joining in. The poor worker had no possible chance againstthis combination, and he went down after a short, futile struggle. Twosmall army ants now happened to pass, and after a preliminary whiffingwith waving antennæ, rushed joyously into the _mêlée_. The beetles hada cowardly weapon, and raising their tails, ejected a drop or two ofliquid, utterly confusing the ants, which turned and hastened back tothe column. For the next few minutes, until the scent wore off, theyaroused suspicion wherever they went. Meanwhile, the hyena-likerove-beetles, having hedged themselves within a barricade of theirmalodor, proceeded to feast, quarreling with one another as suchcowards are wont to do. 

Thus I thought, having identified myself with the army ants. From abroader, less biased point of view, I realized that credit should begiven to the rove-beetles for having established themselves in a zoneof such constant danger, and for being able to live and thrive in it. 

The columns converged at the foot of the post, and up its surface ranthe main artery of the nest. Halfway up, a flat board projected, andhere the column divided for the last time, half going on directly intothe nest, and the other half turning aside, skirting the board, ascending a bit of perpendicular canvas, and entering the nest fromthe rear. The entrance was well guarded by a veritable moat anddrawbridge of living ants. A foot away, a flat mat of ants, mandiblesoutward, was spread, over which every passing individual stepped. Sixinches farther, and the sides of the mat thickened, and in the lastthree inches these sides met overhead, forming a short tunnel at theend of which the nest began. 

And here I noticed an interesting thing. Into this organic moat ortunnel, this living mouth of an inferno, passed all the booty-ladenforagers, or those who for some reason had returned empty-mouthed. Butthe outgoing host seeped gradually from the outermost nest-layer--agradual but fundamental circulation, like that of ocean currents. Scorpions, eggs, caterpillars, glass-like wasp pupæ, roaches, spiders, crickets, --all were drawn into the nest by a maelstrom of hunger, funneling into the narrow tunnel; while from over all the surface ofthe swarm there crept forth layer after layer of invigorated, implacable seekers after food. 

The mass of ants composing the nest appeared so loosely connected thatit seemed as if a touch would tear a hole, a light wind rend thesupports. It was suspended in the upper corner of the doorway, roundedon the free sides, and measured roughly two feet in diameter--anunnumbered host of ants. Those on the surface were in very slow butconstant motion, with legs shifting and antennæ waving continually. This quivering on the surface of the swarm gave it the appearance ofthe fur of some terrible animal--fur blowing in the wind from someunknown, deadly desert. Yet so cohesive was the entire mass, that Isat close beneath it for the best part of two days and not more than adozen ants fell upon me. There was, however, a constant rain ofegg-cases and pupa-skins and the remains of scorpions andgrasshoppers, the residue of the booty which was being poured in. These wrappings and inedible casing were all brought to the surfaceand dropped. This was reasonable, but what I could not comprehend wasa constant falling of small living larvæ. How anything except armyants could emerge alive from such a sinister swarm was inconceivable. It took some resolution to stand up under the nest, with my face onlya foot away from this slowly seething mass of widespread jaws. But Ihad to discover where the falling larvæ came from, and after a time Ifound that they were immature army ants. Here and there a small workerwould appear, carrying in its mandibles a young larva; and while mostmade their way through the maze of mural legs and bodies andultimately disappeared again, once in a while the burden was droppedand fell to the floor of the outhouse. I can account for this only bypresuming that a certain percentage of the nurses were very young andinexperienced workers and dropped their burdens inadvertently. Therewas certainly no intentional casting out of these offspring, as was soobviously the case with the débris from the food of the colony. Theeleven or twelve ants which fell upon me during my watch were allsmaller workers, no larger ones losing their grip. 

While recording some of these facts, I dropped my pencil, and it wasfully ten minutes before the black mass of enraged insects clearedaway, and I could pick it up. Leaning far over to secure it, I wassurprised by the cleanliness of the floor around my chair. My clothesand note-paper had been covered with loose wings, dry skeletons ofinsects and the other débris, while hundreds of other fragments hadsifted down past me. Yet now that I looked seeingly, the whole areawas perfectly clean. I had to assume a perfect jack-knife pose to getmy face near enough to the floor; but, achieving it, I found aboutfive hundred ants serving as a street-cleaning squad. They roamedaimlessly about over the whole floor, ready at once to attackanything of mine, or any part of my anatomy which might come closeenough, but otherwise stimulated to activity only when they cameacross a bit of rubbish from the nest high overhead. This was at onceseized and carried off to one of two neat piles in far corners. Beforenight these kitchen middens were an inch or two deep and nearly a footin length, composed, literally, of thousands of skins, wings, andinsect armor. There was not a scrap of dirt of any kind which had notbeen gathered into one of the two piles. The nest was nine feet abovethe floor, a distance (magnifying ant height to our own) of nearly amile, and yet the care lavished on the cleanliness of the earth so farbelow was as thorough and well done as the actual provisioning of thecolony. 

As I watched the columns and the swarm-nest hour after hour, severalthings impressed me;--the absolute silence in which the antsworked;--such ceaseless activity without sound one associates onlywith a cinema film; all around me was tremendous energy, marvelousfeats of achievement, super-human instincts, the ceaseless movement oftens of thousands of legionaries; yet no tramp of feet, no shouts, nocurses, no welcomes, no chanties. It was uncanny to think of a raceof creatures such as these, dreaded by every living being, whollydominant in their continent-wide sphere of action, yet born, livingout their lives, and dying, dumb and blind, with no possibility ofcomment on life and its fullness, of censure or of applause. 

The sweeping squad on the floor was interesting because of its limitedfield of work at such a distance from the nest; but close to my chairwere a number of other specialized zones of activity, any one of whichwould have afforded a fertile field for concentrated study. Beneaththe swarm on the white canvas, I noticed two large spots of dirt andmoisture, where very small flies were collected. An examination showedthat this was a second, nearer dumping-ground for all the garbage andrefuse of the swarm which could not be thrown down on the kitchenmiddens far below. And here were tiny flies and other insects actingas scavengers, just as the hosts of vultures gather about theslaughter-house of Georgetown. 

The most interesting of all the phases of life of the ants' home town, were those on the horizontal board which projected from the beam andstretched for several feet to one side of the swarm. This platformwas almost on a level with my eyes, and by leaning slightly forward onthe chair, I was as close as I dared go. Here many ants came from theincoming columns, and others were constantly arriving from the nestitself. It was here that I realized my good fortune and theachievement of my desires, when I first saw an army ant at rest. Oneof the first arrivals after I had squatted to my post, was a bigsoldier with a heavy load of roach meat. Instead of keeping onstraight up the post, he turned abruptly and dropped his load. It wasinstantly picked up by two smaller workers and carried on and upwardtoward the nest. Two other big fellows arrived in quick succession, one with a load which he relinquished to a drogher-in-waiting. Thenthe three weary warriors stretched their legs one after another andcommenced to clean their antennæ. This lasted only for a moment, forthree or four tiny ants rushed at each of the larger ones and began asthorough a cleaning as masseurs or Turkish-bath attendants. The threearrivals were at once hustled away to a distant part of the board andthere cleaned from end to end. I found that the focal length of my8-diameter lens was just out of reach of the ants, so I focusedcarefully on one of the soldiers and watched the entire process. Thesmall ants scrubbed and scraped him with their jaws, licking him andremoving every particle of dirt. One even crawled under him and workedaway at his upper leg-joints, for all the world as a mechanic willcreep under a car. Finally, I was delighted to see him do what no carever does, turn completely over and lie quietly on his back with hislegs in air, while his diminutive helpers overran him and graduallygot him into shape for future battles and foraging expeditions. 

On this resting-stage, within well-defined limits, were dozens ofgroups of two cleaning one another, and less numerous parties of thetiny professionals working their hearts out on battle-worn soldiers. It became more and more apparent that in the creed of the army ants, cleanliness comes next to military effectiveness. 

Here and there I saw independent individuals cleaning themselves andgoing through the most un-ant-like movements. They scraped their jawsalong the board, pushing forward like a dog trying to get rid of hismuzzle; then they turned on one side and passed the opposite legsagain and again through the mandibles; while the last performance wasto turn over on their backs and roll from side to side, exactly as ahorse or donkey loves to do. 

One ant, I remember, seemed to have something seriously wrong. It satup on its bent-under abdomen in a most comical fashion, and was theobject of solicitude of every passing ant. Sometimes there were thirtyin a dense group, pushing and jostling; and, like most of our citycrowds, many seemed to stop only long enough to have a moment's morbidsight, or to ask some silly question as to the trouble, then to hurryon. Others remained, and licked and twiddled him with their antennæfor a long time. He was in this position for at least twenty minutes. My curiosity was so aroused that I gathered him up in a vial, whereathe became wildly excited and promptly regained full use of his legsand faculties. Later, when I examined him under the lens, I could findnothing whatever wrong. 

Off at one side of the general cleaning and reconstruction areas was apitiful assemblage of cripples which had had enough energy to crawlback, but which did not attempt, or were not allowed, to enter thenest proper. Some had one or two legs gone, others had lost anantenna or had an injured body. They seemed not to know what todo--wandering around, now and then giving one another a half-heartedlick. In the midst was one which had died, and two others, each badlyinjured, were trying to tug the body along to the edge of the board. This they succeeded in doing after a long series of efforts, and downand down fell the dead ant. It was promptly picked up by severalkitchen-middenites and unceremoniously thrown on the pile ofnest-débris. A load of booty had been dumped among the cripples, andas each wandered close to it, he seemed to regain strength for amoment, picked up the load, and then dropped it. The sight of thatwhich symbolized almost all their life-activity aroused them to amomentary forgetfulness of their disabilities. There was no longer anyplace for them in the home or in the columns of the legionaries. Theyhad been court-martialed under the most implacable, the most impartiallaw in the world--the survival of the fit, the elimination of theunfit. 

The time came when we had to get at our stored supplies, over whichthe army ants were such an effective guard. I experimented on arunning column with a spray of ammonia and found that it createdmerely temporary inconvenience, the ants running back and forming anew trail. Formaline was more effective, so I sprayed the nest-swarmwith a fifty-per-cent solution, strong enough, one would think, toharden the very boards. It certainly created a terrible commotion, andstrings of the ants, two feet long, hung dangling from the nest. Theheart of the colony came into view, with thousands of eggs and larvæ, looking like heaps of white rice-grains. Every ant seized one or theother and sought escape by the nearest way, while the soldiers stilldefied the world. The gradual disintegration revealed an interiormeshed like a wasp's nest, chambered and honeycombed with living tubesand walls. Little by little the taut guy-ropes, lathes, braces, joists, all sagged and melted together, each cell-wall becomingdynamic, now expanding, now contracting; the ceilings vibrant withwaving legs, the floors a seething mass of jaws and antennæ. By thetime it was dark, the swarm was dropping in sections to the floor. 

On the following morning new surprises awaited me. The great mass ofthe ants had moved in the night, vanishing with every egg andimmature larva; but there was left in the corner of the flat board aswarm of about one-quarter of the entire number, enshrouding a host ofolder larvæ. The cleaning zones, the cripples' gathering-room, all hadgiven way to new activities, on the flat board, down near the kitchenmiddens, and in every horizontal crack. 

The cause of all this strange excitement, this braving of the terribledangers of fumes which had threatened to destroy the entire colony thenight before, suddenly was made plain as I watched. A critical timewas at hand in the lives of the all-precious larvæ, when they couldnot be moved--the period of spinning, of beginning the transformationfrom larvæ to pupæ. This evidently was an operation which had to takeplace outside the nest and demanded some sort of light covering. Onthe flat board were several thousand ants and a dozen or more groupsof full-grown larvæ. Workers of all sizes were searching everywherefor some covering for the tender immature creatures. They had chewedup all available loose splinters of wood, and near the rotten, termite-eaten ends, the sound of dozens of jaws gnawing all at oncewas plainly audible. This unaccustomed, unmilitary labor produced aquantity of fine sawdust, which was sprinkled over the larvæ. I hadmade a partition of a bit of a British officer's tent which I had usedin India and China, made of several layers of colored canvas andcloth. The ants found a loose end of this, teased it out and unraveledit, so that all the larvæ near by were blanketed with a gay, parti-colored covering of fuzz. 

All this strange work was hurried and carried on under greatexcitement. The scores of big soldiers on guard appeared rather ill atease, as if they had wandered by mistake into the wrong department. They sauntered about, bumped into larvæ, turned and fled. A constantstream of workers from the nest brought hundreds more larvæ; and nosooner had they been planted and débris of sorts sifted over them, than they began spinning. A few had already swathed themselves incocoons--exceedingly thin coverings of pinkish silk. As this tookplace out of the nest, --in the jungle they must be covered with woodand leaves. The vital necessity for this was not apparent, for none ofthis débris was incorporated into the silk of the cocoons, which wereclean and homogeneous. Yet the hundreds of ants gnawed and tore andlabored to gather this little dust, as if their very lives dependedupon it. 

With my hand-lens focused just beyond mandible reach of the biggestsoldier, I leaned forward from my insulated chair, hovering like agreat astral eye looking down at this marvelously important businessof little lives. Here were thousands of army ants, not killing, notcarrying booty, nor even suspended quiescent as organic molecules inthe structure of the home, yet in feverish activity equaled only bybattle, making ready for the great change of their foster offspring. Iwatched the very first thread of silk drawn between the larva and theoutside world, and in an incredibly short time the cocoon was outlinedin a tissue-thin, transparent aura, within which the tenant could beseen skilfully weaving its own shroud. 

When first brought from the nest, the larvæ lay quite straight andstill; but almost at once they bent far over in the spinning position. Then some officious worker would come along, and the unfortunate larvawould be snatched up, carried off, and jammed down in some neighboringempty space, like a bolt of cloth rearranged upon a shelf. Thenanother ant would approach, antennæ the larva, disapprove, and againshift its position. It was a real survival of the lucky, as to whoshould avoid being exhausted by kindness and over-solicitude. Iuttered many a chuckle at the half-ensilked unfortunates being totedabout like mummies, and occasionally giving a sturdy, impatient kickwhich upset their tormentors and for a moment created a little swirlof mild excitement. 

There was no order of packing. The larvæ were fitted together anyway, and meagerly covered with dust of wood and shreds of cloth. One bigtissue of wood nearly an inch square was too great a temptation to belet alone, and during the course of my observation it covered in turnalmost every group of larvæ in sight, ending by being accidentallyshunted over the edge and killing a worker near the kitchen middens. There was only a single layer of larvæ; in no case were they piled up, and when the platform became crowded, a new column was formed andhundreds taken outside. To the casual eye there was no differencebetween these legionaries and a column bringing in booty of insects, eggs, and pupæ; yet here all was solicitude, never a bite too severe, or a blunder of undue force. 

The sights I saw in this second day's accessible nest-swarm wouldwarrant a season's meditation and study, but one thing impressed meabove all others. Sometimes, when I carefully pried open one sectionand looked deep within, I could see large chambers with the larvæ inpiles, besides being held in the mandibles of the components of thewalls and ceilings. Now and then a curious little ghost-like formwould flit across the chamber, coming to rest, gnome-like, on larva orant. Again and again I saw these little springtails skip through thevery scimitar mandibles of a soldier, while the workers paid noattention to them. I wondered if they were not quite odorless, intangible to the ants, invisible guests which lived close to them, going where, doing what they willed, yet never perceived by thethousands of inhabitants. They seemed to live in a kind of fourthdimensional state, a realm comparable to that which we people withghosts and spirits. It was a most uncanny, altogether absorbing, intensely interesting relationship; and sometimes, when I ponder onsome general aspect of the great jungle, --a forest of greenheart, amighty rushing river, a crashing, blasting thunderstorm, --my mindsuddenly reverts by way of contrast to the tiny ghosts of springtailsflitting silently among the terrible living chambers of the army ants. 

On the following morning I expected to achieve still greater intimacyin the lives of the mummy soldier embryos; but at dawn every trace ofnesting swarm, larvæ, pupæ and soldiers was gone. A few dead workerswere being already carried off by small ants which never would havedared approach them in life. A big blue morpho butterfly flappedslowly past out of the jungle, and in its wake came the distantnotes--high and sharp--of the white-fronted antbirds; and I knew thatthe legionaries were again abroad, radiating on their silent, dynamicpaths of life from some new temporary nest deep in the jungle. 

IV

A JUNGLE BEACH

A jungle moon first showed me my beach. For a week I had looked at itin blazing sunlight, walked across it, even sat on it in the intervalsof getting wonted to the new laboratory; yet I had not perceived it. Colonel Roosevelt once said to me that he would rather perceive thingsfrom the point of view of a field-mouse, than be a human being andmerely see them. And in my case it was when I could no longer see thebeach that I began to discern its significance. 

This British Guiana beach, just in front of my Kartabo bungalow, wasremarkably diversified, and in a few steps, or strokes of a paddle, Icould pass from clean sand to mangroves and muckamucka swamp, thenceto out-jutting rocks, and on to the Edge of the World, all within adistance of a hundred yards. For a time my beach walks resulted ininarticulate reaction. After months in the blindfolded canyons of NewYork's streets, a hemicircle of horizon, a hemisphere of sky, and avast expanse of open water lent itself neither to calm appraisal norto impromptu cuff-notes. 

It was recalled to my mind that the miracle of sunrise occurred everymorning, and was not a rather belated alternation of illumination, following the quenching of Broadway's lights. And the moon I found wasas dependable as when I timed my Himalayan expeditions by hershadowings. To these phenomena I soon became re-accustomed, and couldwatch a bird or outwit an insect in the face of a foreglow and silentburst of flame that shamed all the barrages ever laid down. But cosmichappenings kept drawing my attention and paralyzing my activities forlong afterward. With a double rainbow and four storms in action atonce; or a wall of rain like sawn steel slowly drawing up one riverwhile the Mazaruni remains in full sunlight; with Pegasus gallopingtoward the zenith at midnight and the Pleiades just clearing the PenalSettlement, I could not always keep on dissecting, or recording, orverifying the erroneousness of one of my recently formed theories. 

There was Thuban, gazing steadily upon my little mahogany bungalow, as, six millenniums ago, he had shone unfalteringly down the littlestone tube that led his rays into the Queen's Chamber, in the veryheart of great Cheops. Just clearing a low palm was the present NorthStar, while, high above, Vega shone, patiently waiting to take herplace half a million years hence. When beginning her nightly climb, Vega drew a thin, trembling thread of argent over the still water, just as in other years she had laid for me a slender silver strand ofwire across frozen snow, and on one memorable night traced the ghostof a reflection over damp sand near the Nile--pale as the wraiths ofthe early Pharaohs. 

Low on the eastern horizon, straight outward from my beach, was thebeginning and end of the great zodiac band--the golden Hamal of Ariesand the paired stars of Pisces; and behind, over the black jungle, glowed the Southern Cross. But night after night, as I watched on thebeach, the sight which moved me most was the dull speck of emeraldmist, a merest smudge on the slate of the heavens, --the spiral nebulain Andromeda, --a universe in the making, of a size unthinkable tohuman minds. 

The power of my jungle beach to attract and hold attention was notonly direct and sensory, --through sight and sound and scent, --butoften indirect, seemingly by occult means. Time after time, on animpulse, I followed some casual line of thought and action, and foundmyself at last on or near the beach, on a lead that eventually wouldtake me to the verge or into the water. 

Once I did what for me was a most unusual thing. I woke in the middleof the night without apparent reason. The moonlight was pouring in awhite flood through the bamboos, and the jungle was breathless andsilent. Through my window I could see Jennie, our pet monkey, lyingaloft, asleep on her little verandah, head cushioned on both hands, tail curled around her dangling chain, as a spider guards herweb-strands for hint of disturbing vibrations. I knew that theslightest touch on that chain would awaken her, and indeed it seemedas if the very thought of it had been enough; for she opened her eyes, sent me the highest of insect-like notes and turned over, pushing herhead within the shadow of her little house. I wondered if animals, too, were, like the Malays and so many savage tribes, afraid of themoonlight--the "luna-cy" danger in those strange color-strained rays, whose power must be greater than we realize. Beyond the monkey roostedRobert, the great macaw, wide-awake, watching me with all thatbroadside of intensive gaze of which only a parrot is capable. 

The three of us seemed to be the only living things in the world, andfor a long time we--monkey, macaw, and man--listened. Then all but theman became uneasy. The monkey raised herself and listened, uncurledher tail, shifted, and listened. The macaw drew himself up, feathersclose, forgot me, and listened. They, unlike me, were not merelylistening--they were hearing something. Then there came, very slowlyand deliberately, as if reluctant to break through the silentmoonlight, a sound, low and constant, impossible to identify, butclearly audible even to my ears. For just an instant longer it held, sustained and quivering, then swiftly rose into a crashing roar--thesound of a great tree falling. I sat up and heard the whole longdescent; but at the end, after the moment of silence, there was nodeep boom--the sound of the mighty bole striking and rebounding fromthe earth itself. I wondered about this for a while; then the monkeyand I went to sleep, leaving the macaw alone conscious in themoonlight, watching through the night with his great round, yelloworbs, and thinking the thoughts that macaws always think in themoonlight. 

The next day the macaw and the monkey had forgotten all about themidnight sound, but I searched and found why there was no final boom. And my search ended at my beach. A bit of overhanging bank had givenway and a tall tree had fallen headlong into the water, its rootssprawling helplessly in mid-air. Like rats deserting a sinking ship, awhole Noah's ark of tree-living creatures was hastening along a singlecable shorewards: tree-crickets; ants laden with eggs and larvæ;mantids gesticulating as they walked, like old men who mumble tothemselves; wood-roaches, some green and leaf-like, others, facsimilesof trilobites--but fleet of foot and with one goal. 

What was a catastrophe for a tree and a shift of home for the tenantswas good fortune for me, and I walked easily out along the trunk andbranches and examined the strange parasitic growths and the homeswhich were being so rapidly deserted. The tide came up and covered thelower half of the prostrate tree, drowning what creatures had notmade their escape and quickening the air-plants with a false rain, which in course of time would rot their very hearts. 

But the first few days were only the overture of changes in this shiftof conditions. Tropic vegetation is so tenacious of life that itstruggles and adapts itself with all the cunning of a Japanesewrestler. We cut saplings and thrust them into mud or the crevices ofrocks at low tide far from shore, to mark our channel, and before longwe have buoys of foliage banners waving from the bare poles abovewater. We erect a tall bamboo flagpole on the bank, and before longour flag is almost hidden by the sprouting leaves, and the pulley soblocked that we have occasionally to lower and lop it. 

So the fallen tree, still gripping the nutritious bank with a moietyof roots, turned slowly in its fibrous stiffness and directed its lifeand sap and hopes upward. During the succeeding weeks I watched trunkand branches swell and bud out new trunks, new branches, guided, controlled, by gravity, light, and warmth; and just beyond the reachof the tides, leaves sprouted, flowers opened and fruit ripened. Weeksafter the last slow invertebrate plodder had made his escapeshorewards, the taut liana strand was again crowded with a mass ofpassing life--a maze of vines and creepers, whose tendrils and suckersreached and curled and pressed onward, fighting for gangway to shore, through days and weeks, as the animal life which preceded them hadmade the most of seconds and minutes. 

The half-circle of exposed raw bank became in its turn the center of amyriad activities. Great green kingfishers began at once to burrow;tiny emerald ones chose softer places up among the wreckage ofwrenched roots; wasps came and chopped out bits for the walls andpartitions of their cells; spiders hung their cobwebs between ratlinesof rootlets; and hummingbirds promptly followed and plucked them fromtheir silken nets, and then took the nets to bind their own tinyair-castles. Finally, other interests intervened, and like Jennie andRobert, I gradually forgot the tree that fell without an echo. 

In the jungle no action or organism is separate, or quite apart, andthis thing which came to the three of us suddenly at midnight led bydevious means to another magic phase of the shore. 

A little to the south along my beach is the Edge of the World. Atleast, it looks very much as I have always imagined that place mustlook, and I have never been beyond it; so that, after listening tomany arguments in courts of law, and hearing the reasoning ofbolsheviki, teetotalers, and pacifists, I feel that I am quitereasonable as human beings go. And best of all, it hurts no one, andannoys only a few of my scientific friends, who feel that one cannotindulge in such ideas at the wonderful hour of twilight, and yet ateight o'clock the following morning describe with impeccable accuracythe bronchial semi-rings, and the intricate mosaic of cartilage whichcharacterizes and supports the _membranis tympaniformis_ of _Attilathamnophiloides_; a dogma which halves life and its interests. 

The Edge of the World has always meant a place where usual things aredifferent; and my southern stretch of beach was that, because ofroots. Whenever in digging I have come across a root and seen itsliving flesh, perhaps pink or rose or pale green, so far underground, I have desired to know roots better; and now I found my opportunity. Iwalked along the proper trail, through right and usual trees, withreasonable foliage and normal trunks, and suddenly I stepped down overthe Edge. Overhead and all around there was still the foliage. It shutout the sun except for greenish, moderated spots and beams. Thebranches dipped low in front over the water, shutting out the skyexcept along the tops of the cross-river jungle. Thus a greatgreen-roofed chamber was formed; and here, between jungle and thewater-level of the world, was the Kingdom of the Roots. 

Great trees had in their youth fallen far forward, undermined by thewater, then slowly taken a new reach upward and stretched forth greatfeet and hands of roots, palms pressing against the mud, curved backsand thews of shoulders braced against one another and the drag of thetides. Little by little the old prostrate trunks were entirelyobliterated by this fantastic network. There were no fine fibers orrootlets here; only great beams and buttresses, bridges and up-endedspirals, grown together or spreading wide apart. Root merged withtrunk, and great boles became roots and then boles again in thisunreasonable land. For here, in place of damp, black mold and soil, water alternated with dark-shadowed air; and so I was able for a timeto live the life of a root, resting quietly among them, watching andfeeling them, and moving very slowly, with no thought of time, asroots must. 

I liked to wait until the last ripple had lapped against the sandbeneath, and then slip quietly in from the margin of the jungle andperch--like a great tree-frog--on some convenient shelf. Seumas andBrigid would have enjoyed it, in spite of the fact that theLeprechauns seemed to have just gone. I found myself usually in alittle room, walled with high-arched, thin sheets of living roots, some of which would form solid planks three feet wide and twelve long, and only an inch or two in thickness. These were always on edge, andmight be smooth and sheer, or suddenly sprout five stubby, mittenedfingers, or pairs of curved and galloping legs--and this thought gavesubstance to the simile which had occurred again and again: thesetrees reminded me of centaurs with proud, upright man torsos, andgreat curved backs. In one, a root dropped down and rested on theback, as a centaur who turns might rest his hand on his withers. 

When I chanced upon an easy perch, and a stray idea came to mind, Isquatted or sat or sprawled, and wrote, and strange things oftenhappened to me. Once, while writing rapidly on a small sheet of paper, I found my lines growing closer and closer together until my fingerscramped, and the consciousness of the change overlaid the thoughtsthat were driving hand and pen. I then realized that, withoutthinking, I had been following a succession of faint lines, cross-ruled on my white paper, and looking up, I saw that aleaf-filtered opening had reflected strands of a spider-web just abovemy head, and I had been adapting my lines to the narrow spaces, mychirography controlled by cobweb shadows. 

The first unreality of the roots was their rigidity. I stepped fromone slender tendon of wood to the next, expecting a bending whichnever occurred. They might have been turned to stone, and even littletwigs resting on the bark often proved to have grown fast. And thiswas the more unexpected because of the grace of curve and line, foldupon fold, with no sharp angles, but as full of charm of contour astheir grays and olives were harmonious in color. Photographs showed alittle of this; sketches revealed more; but the great splendid thingsthemselves, devoid of similes and human imagination, weresoul-satisfying in their simplicity. 

I seldom sat in one spot more than a few minutes, but climbed andshifted, tried new seats, couches, perches, grips, sprawling out alongthe tops of two parallel monsters, or slipping under their bellies, always finding some easy way to swing up again. Two openings justpermitted me to squeeze through, and I wondered whether, in anotheryear, or ten, or fifty, the holes would have grown smaller. I becameimbued with the quiet joy of these roots, so that I hated to touch theground. Once I stepped down on the beach after something I haddropped, and the soft yielding of the sand was so unpleasant that Idid not afterwards leave this strange mid-zone until I had to return. Unlike Antæus, I seemed to gain strength and poise by disassociationwith the earth. 

Here and there were pockets in the folds of the sweeping draperies, and each pocket was worth picking. When one tried to paint the roots, these pockets seemed made expressly to take the place of palette cups, except that now and then a crab resented the infusion of Hooker'sgreen with his Vandyke brown puddle, and seized the end of the brush. The crabs were worthy tenants of such strange architecture, withcomical eyes twiddling on the end of their stalks, and theirwhite-mittened fists feinting and threatening as I looked into theirlittle dark rain or tide-pools. 

I found three pockets on one wall, which seemed as if they must havebeen "salted" for my benefit; and in them, as elsewhere on my beach, the two extremes of life met. The topmost one, curiously enough, contained a small crab, together with a large water-beetle at thefarther end. Both seemed rather self-conscious, and there was no hintof fraternizing. The beetle seemed to be merely existing untildarkness, when he could fly to more water and better company; and thecrab appeared to be waiting for the beetle to go. 

The next pocket was a long, narrow, horizontal fold, and I hoped tofind real excitement among its aquatic folk; but to my surprise it hadno bottom, but was a deep chute or socket, opening far below to thesand. However, this was not my discovery, and I saw dimly a weirdlittle head looking up at me--a gecko lizard, which called thiscrevice home and the crabs neighbors. I hailed him as the only otherbackboned friend who shared the root-world with me, and then listenedto a high, sweet tone, which came forth in swinging rhythm. It tooksome time for my eyes to become accustomed to the semi-darkness, andthen I saw what the gecko saw--a big yellow-bodied fly humming in thiscavern, and swinging in a small orbit as she sang. Now and then shedashed out past me and hovered in mid-air, when her note sank to alow, dull hum. Back again, and the sound rose and fell, and gained tentimes in volume from the echo or reverberations. Each time she passed, the little lizard licked his chops and swallowed--a sort of vicariousexpression of faith or desire; or was he in a Christian Science frameof mind, saying, "My, how good that fly tasted!" each time thedipteron passed? The fly was just as inexplicable, braving danger anddarkness time after time, to leave the sunshine and vibrate in thedusk to the enormously magnified song of its wings. 

With eyes that had forgotten the outside light, I leaned close to theopening and rested my forehead against the lichens of the wall ofwood. The fly was frightened away, the gecko slipped lower, seeminglywithout effort, and in a hollowed side of the cavernous root I saw amist, a quivering, so tenuous and indistinct that at first it mighthave been the dancing of motes. I saw that they were livingcreatures--the most delicate of tiny crane-flies--at rest looking likelong-legged mosquitoes. Deep within this root, farther from the lightthan even the singing fly had ventured, these tiny beings whirledmadly in mid-air--subterranean dervishes, using up energy for theirown inexplicable ends, of which one very interested naturalist couldmake nothing. 

Three weeks afterward I happened to pass at high tide in the canoe andpeered into this pocket. The gecko was where geckos go in the space ofthree weeks, and the fly also had vanished, either within or withoutthe gecko. But the crane-flies were still there: to my roughlyappraising eyes the same flies, doing the same dance in exactly thesame place. Three weeks later, and again I returned, this timeintentionally, to see whether the dance still continued; and it was infull swing. That same night at midnight I climbed down, flashed alight upon them, and there they whirled and vibrated, silently, incredibly rapid, unceasingly. 

After a thousand hours all the surroundings had changed. New leaveshad sprouted, flowers faded and turned to fruit, the moon had twiceattained her full brightness, our earth and sun and the whole solarsystem had swept headlong a full two-score million miles on theendless swing toward Vega. Only the roots and the crane-fliesremained. A thousand hours had apparently made no difference to them. The roots might have been the granite near by, fashioned by primevalearth-flame, and the flies but vibrating atoms within the granite, made visible by some alchemy of elements in this weird Rim of theWorld. 

And so a new memory is mine; and when one of these insects comes to mylamp in whatever part of the world, fluttering weakly, legs breakingoff at the slightest touch, I shall cease to worry about thescientific problems that loom too great for my brain, or about theimperfection of whatever I am doing, and shall welcome the crane-flyand strive to free him from this fatal passion for flame, directinghim again into the night; for he may be looking for a dark pocket in aroot, a pocket on the Edge of the World, where crane-flies may vibratewith their fellows in an eternal dance. And so, in some ordained way, he will fulfil his destiny and I acquire merit. 

 * * * * *

To write of sunrises and moonlight is to commit literary harikiri; butas that terminates life, so may I end this. And I choose the morningand the midnight of the sixth of August, for reasons both greater andless than cosmic. Early that morning, looking out from the beach overthe Mazacuni, as we called the union of the two great rivers, therewas wind, yet no wind, as the sun prepared to lift above the horizon. The great soft-walled jungle was clear and distinct. Every reed at thelanding had its unbroken counterpart in the still surface. But at theapex of the waters, the smoke of all the battles in the world hadgathered, and upon this the sun slowly concentrated his powers, untilhe tore apart the cloak of mist, turning the dark surface, first tooxidized, and then to shining quicksilver. Instantaneously the sameshaft of light touched the tips of the highest trees, and as if inresponse to a poised bâton, there broke forth that wonder of theworld--the Zoroastrian chorus of tens of thousands of junglecreatures. 

Over the quicksilver surface little individual breezes wandered hereand there. I could clearly see the beginning and the end of them, andone that drifted ashore and passed me felt like the lightest touch ofa breath. One saw only the ripple on the water; one thought ofinvisible wings and trailing unseen robes. 

With the increasing warmth the water-mist rose slowly, like a lastquiet breath of night; and as it ascended, --the edges changing fromsilvery gray to grayish white, --it gathered close its shreddedmargins, grew smaller as it rose higher, and finally became a cloud. Iwatched it and wondered about its fate. Before the day was past, itmight darken in its might, hurl forth thunders and jagged light, andlose its very substance in down-poured liquid. Or, after drifting idlyhigh in air, the still-born cloud might garb itself in rich purple andgold for the pageant of the west, and again descend to brood over thecoming marvel of another sunrise. 

The tallest of bamboos lean over our low, lazy spread of bungalow; andlate this very night, in the full moonlight, I leave my cot and walkdown to the beach over a shadow carpet of Japanese filigree. The airover the white sand is as quiet and feelingless to my skin ascomplete, comfortable clothing. On one side is the dark river; on theother, the darker jungle full of gentle rustlings, low, velvetybreaths of sound; and I slip into the water and swim out, out, out. Then I turn over and float along with the almost tangible moonlightflooding down on face and water. Suddenly the whole air is broken bythe chorus of big red baboons, which rolls and tumbles toward me inmasses of sound along the surface and goes trembling, echoing on overshore and jungle, till hurled back by the answering chorus of anotherclan. It stirs one to the marrow, for there is far more in it than themere roaring of monkeys; and I turn uneasily, and slowly surge backtoward the sand, overhand now, making companionable splashes. 

And then again I stop, treading water softly, with face alone betweenriver and sky; for the monkeys have ceased, and very faint and low, but blended in wonderful minor harmony, comes another chorus--fromthree miles down the river: the convicts singing hymns in their cellsat midnight. And I ground gently and sit in the silvered shadows withlittle bewildered shrimps flicking against me, and unlanguagedthoughts come and go--impossible similes, too poignant phrases to bestopped and fettered with words, and I am neither scientist nor mannor naked organism, but just mind. With the coming of silence I lookaround and again consciously take in the scene. I am very glad to bealive, and to know that the possible dangers of jungle and water havenot kept me armed and indoors. I feel, somehow, as if my very daringand gentle slipping-off of all signs of dominance and protection onentering into this realm had made friends of all the rare but possibleserpents and scorpions, sting-rays and perai, vampires and electriceels. For a while I know the happiness of Mowgli. 

And I think of people who would live more joyful lives in densecommunities, who would be more tolerant, and more certain ofstraightforward friendship, if they could have as a background afundamental hour of living such as this, a leaven for the rest ofwhat, in comparison, seems mere existence. 

At last I go back between the bamboos and their shadows, from unrealreality into a definiteness of cot and pajamas and electric torch. Butwild nature still keeps touch with me; for as I write these lines, curled up on the edge of the cot, two vampires hawk back and forth soclose that the wind from their wings dries my ink. And the soundnessof my sleep is such that time does not exist between their lastcrepuscular squeak and the first wiry twittering of a blue tanager, infull sunshine, from a palm overhanging my beach. 

V

A BIT OF USELESSNESS

A most admirable servant of mine once risked his life to reach amagnificent Bornean orchid, and tried to poison me an hour later whenhe thought I was going to take the plant away from him. This does notmean necessarily that we should look with suspicion upon all gardenersand lovers of flowers. It emphasizes, rather, the fact of theuniversal and deep-rooted appreciation of the glories of the vegetablekingdom. Long before the fatal harvest time, I am certain that Evemust have plucked a spray of apple blossoms with perfect impunity. 

A vast amount of bad poetry and a much less quantity of excellentverse has been written about flowers, much of which follows to theletter Mark Twain's injunction about Truth. It must be admitted thatthe relations existing between the honeysuckle and the bee are baselypractical and wholly selfish. A butterfly's admiration of a flower isno whit less than the blossom's conscious appreciation of its ownbeauties. There are ants which spend most of their life makinggardens, knowing the uses of fertilizers, mulching, planting seeds, exercising patience, recognizing the time of ripeness, and gatheringthe edible fruit. But this is underground, and the ants are blind. 

There is a bird, however--the bower bird of Australia--which appearsto take real delight in bright things, especially pebbles and flowersfor their own sake. Its little lean-to, or bower of sticks, which hasbeen built in our own Zoological Park in New York City, is fronted bya cleared space, which is usually mossy. To this it brings itscolorful treasures, sometimes a score of bright star blossoms, whichare renewed when faded and replaced by others. All this has, probably, something to do with courtship, which should inspire a sonnet. 

From the first pre-Egyptian who crudely scratched a lotus on his dishof clay, down to the jolly Feckenham men, the human race has given toflowers something more than idle curiosity, something less than mereearnest of fruit or berry. 

At twelve thousand feet I have seen one of my Tibetans with nothingbut a few shreds of straw between his bare feet and the snow, probearound the south edge of melting drifts until he found brilliantlittle primroses to stick behind his ears. I have been ushered intothe little-used, musty best-parlor of a New England farmhouse, andseen fresh vases of homely, old-fashioned flowers--so recently placedfor my edification, that drops of water still glistened like dewdropson the dusty plush mat beneath. I have sat in the seat of honor of aDyak communal house, looked up at the circle of all too recent heads, and seen a gay flower in each hollow eye socket, placed there for myapproval. With a cluster of colored petals swaying in the breeze, onemay at times bridge centuries or span the earth. 

And now as I sit writing these words in my jungle laboratory, a smalldusky hand steals around an aquarium and deposits a beautiful spray oforchids on my table. The little face appears, and I can distinguishthe high cheek bones of Indian blood, the flattened nose and slightkink of negro, and the faint trace of white--probably of some longforgotten Dutch sailor, who came and went to Guiana, while New YorkCity was still a browsing ground for moose. 

So neither race nor age nor mélange of blood can eradicate the loveof flowers. It would be a wonderful thing to know about the firstgarden that ever was, and I wish that "Best Beloved" had demandedthis. I am sure it was long before the day of dog, or cow, or horse, or even she who walked alone. The only way we can imagine it, is to goto some wild part of the earth, where are fortunate people who havenever heard of seed catalogs or lawn mowers. 

Here in British Guiana I can run the whole gamut of gardens, within afew miles of where I am writing. A mile above my laboratory up-river, is the thatched _benab_ of an Akawai Indian--whose house is a roof, whose rooms are hammocks, whose estate is the jungle. Degas can speakEnglish, and knows the use of my 28-gauge double barrel well enough tobring us a constant supply of delicious bushmeat--peccary, deer, monkey, bush turkeys and agoutis. But Grandmother has no language buther native Akawai. She is a good friend of mine, and we hold longconversations, neither of us bothering with the letter, but only thespirit of communication. She is a tiny person, bowed and wrinkled asonly an old Indian squaw can be, always jolly and chuckling toherself, although Degas tells me that the world is graduallydarkening for her. And she vainly begs me to clear the film which isslowly closing over her eyes. She labors in a true landscapegarden--the small circle wrested with cutlass and fire from the greatjungle, and kept free only by constant cutting of the vines and lianaswhich creep out almost in a night, like sinister octopus tentacles, tostrangle the strange upstarts and rejungle the bit of sunlit glade. 

Although to the eye a mass of tangled vegetation, an Indian's gardenmay be resolved into several phases--all utterly practical, with colorand flowers as mere by-products. First come the provisions, for ifDegas were not hunting for me, and eating my rations, he would be outwith bow and blowpipe, or fish-hooks, while the women worked all dayin the cassava field. It is his part to clear and burn the forest, itis hers to grub up the rich mold, to plant and to weed. Plots and bedsare unknown, for in every direction are fallen trees, too large toburn or be chopped up, and great sprawling roots. Between these, sprouts of cassava and banana are stuck, and the yams and melons whichform the food of these primitive people. Cassava is as vital to theseIndians as the air they breathe. It is their wheat and corn and rice, their soup and salad and dessert, their ice and their wine, forbesides being their staple food, it provides _casareep_ whichpreserves their meat, and _piwarie_ which, like excellent wine, brightens life for them occasionally, or dims it if overindulgedin--which is equally true of food, or companionship, or the oxygen inthe air we breathe. 

Besides this cultivation, Grandmother has a small group of plantswhich are only indirectly concerned with food. One is _kunami_, whoseleaves are pounded into pulp, and used for poisoning the water ofjungle streams, with the surprising result that the fish all leap outon the bank and can be gathered as one picks up nuts. When I firstvisited Grandmother's garden, she had a few pitiful little cottonplants from whose stunted bolls she extracted every fiber and made amost excellent thread. In fact, when she made some bead aprons for me, she rejected my spool of cotton and chose her own, twisted betweenthumb and finger. I sent for seed of the big Sea Island cotton, andher face almost unwrinkled with delight when she saw the packets withseed larger than she had ever known. 

Far off in one corner I make certain I have found beauty for beauty'ssake, a group of exquisite caladiums and amaryllis, beautiful flowersand rich green leaves with spots and slashes of white and crimson. Butthis is the hunter's garden, and Grandmother has no part in it, perhaps is not even allowed to approach it. It is the _beena_garden--the charms for good luck in hunting. The similarity of theleaves to the head or other parts of deer or peccary or red-gilledfish, decides the most favorable choice, and the acrid, smarting juiceof the tuber rubbed into the skin, or the hooks and arrows anointed, is considered sufficient to produce the desired result. Long ago Idiscovered that this demand for immediate physical sensation was anecessary corollary of doctoring, so I always give two medicines--onefor its curative properties, and the other, bitter, sour, acid oranything disagreeable, for arousing and sustaining faith in myability. 

The Indian's medicine plants, like his true name, he keeps to himself, and although I feel certain that Grandmother had somewhere a toothachebush, or pain leaves--yarbs and simples for various miseries--I couldnever discover them. Half a dozen tall tobacco plants brought fromthe far interior, eked out the occasional tins of cigarettes in whichDegas indulged, and always the flame-colored little buck-pepperslightened up the shadows of the _benab_, as hot to the palate as theircolor to the eye. 

One day just as I was leaving, Grandmother led me to a palm nearby, and to one of its ancient frond-sheaths was fastened a small brownbranch to which a few blue-green leaves were attached. I had neverseen anything like it. She mumbled and touched it with her shriveled, bent fingers. I could understand nothing, and sent for Degas, who cameand explained grudgingly, "Me no know what for--_toko-nook_ justname--have got smell when yellow. " And so at last I found the bit ofuselessness, which, carried onward and developed in ages to come, asit had been elsewhere in ages past, was to evolve into botany, andback-yard gardens, and greenhouses, and wars of roses, and beautifulpaintings, and music with a soul of its own, and verse more thanhuman. To Degas the _toko-nook_ was "just name, " "and it was nothingmore. " But he was forgiven, for he had all unwittingly sowed the seedsof religion, through faith in his glowing caladiums. But Grandmother, though all the sunlight seemed dusk, and the dawn but as night, yetclung to her little plant, whose glory was that it was of no usewhatsoever, but in months to come would be yellow, and would smell. 

Farther down river, in the small hamlets of the bovianders--the peopleof mixed blood--the practical was still necessity, but almost everythatched and wattled hut had its swinging orchid branch, and perhaps ahideous painted tub with picketed rim, in which grew a golden splashof croton. This ostentatious floweritis might furnish a theme for awholly new phase of the subject--for in almost every respect thesepeople are less worthy human beings--physically, mentally andmorally--than the Indians. But one cannot shift literary overalls forphilosophical paragraphs in mid-article, so let us take the littleriver steamer down stream for forty miles to the coast of BritishGuiana, and there see what Nature herself does in the way of gardens. We drive twenty miles or more before we reach Georgetown, and thesides of the road are lined for most of the distance with huts andhovels of East Indian coolies and native Guiana negroes. Some are madeof boxes, others of bark, more of thatch or rough-hewn boards andbarrel staves, and some of split bamboo. But they resemble oneanother in several respects--all are ramshackle, all lean with thegrace of Pisa, all have shutters and doors, so that at night they maybe hermetically closed, and all are half-hidden in the folds of acurtain of flowers. The most shiftless, unlovely hovel, poised readyto return to its original chemical elements, is embowered in a mosaicof color, which in a northern garden would be worth a king'sransom--or to be strictly modern, should I not say a labor foreman'sor a comrade's ransom!

The deep trench which extends along the front of these sad dwellingsis sometimes blue with water hyacinths; next the water disappearsbeneath a maze of tall stalks, topped with a pink mist of lotus; thencome floating lilies and more hyacinths. Wherever there is sufficientclear water, the wonderful curve of a cocoanut palm is etched upon it, reflection meeting palm, to form a dendritic pattern unequaled inhuman devising. 

Over a hut of rusty oil-cans, bougainvillia stretches its glowingbranches, sometimes cerise, sometimes purple, or allamanders fill theair with a golden haze from their glowing search-lights, either hidingthe huts altogether, or softening their details into picturesqueruins. I remember one coolie dwelling which was dirtier and lesshabitable than the meanest stable, and all around it were hundredsupon hundreds of frangipanni blooms--the white and gold temple flowersof the East--giving forth of scent and color all that a flower iscapable, to alleviate the miserable blot of human construction. Nowand then a flamboyant tree comes into view, and as, at night, thehead-lights of an approaching car eclipse all else, so this tree ofburning scarlet draws eye and mind from adjacent human-made squalor. In all the tropics of the world I scarcely remember to have seen moremagnificent color than in these unattended, wilful-grown gardens. 

In tropical cities such as Georgetown, there are very beautifulprivate gardens, and the public one is second only to that of Java. But for the most part one is as conscious of the very dreadful bordersof brick, or bottles, or conchs, as of the flowers themselves. Someone who is a master gardener will some day write of the possibilitiesof a tropical garden, which will hold the reader as does desire tobehold the gardens of Carcassonne itself. 

VI

GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS

Again the Guiana jungle comes wonderfully to the eye and mysteriouslyto the mind; again my khakis and sneakers are skin-comfortable; againI am squatted on a pleasant mat of leaves in a miniature gorge, milesback of my Kartabo bungalow. Life elsewhere has already becomeunthinkable. I recall a place boiling with worried people, rent withunpleasing sounds, and beset with unsatisfactory pleasures. In lessthan a year I shall long for a sight of these worried people, my earswill strain to catch the unpleasing sounds, and I shall plunge withjoy into the unsatisfactory pleasures. To-day, however, all these havepassed from mind, and I settle down another notch, head snuggled onknees, and sway, elephant-fashion, with sheer joy, as a musky, exciting odor comes drifting, apparently by its own volition, downthrough the windless little gorge. 

If I permit a concrete, scientific reaction, I must acknowledge thesource to be a passing bug, --a giant bug, --related distantly to ourmalodorous northern squash-bug, but emitting a scent as different asorchids' breath from grocery garlic. But I accept this delicatevolatility as simply another pastel-soft sense-impression--as anearnest of the worthy, smelly things of old jungles. There is nobreeze, no slightest shift of air-particles; yet down the gorge comesthis cloud, --a cloud unsensible except to nostrils, --eddying as ifswirling around the edges of leaves, riding on the air as gently asthe low, distant crooning of great, sleepy jungle doves. 

With two senses so perfectly occupied, sight becomes superfluous and Iclose my eyes. And straightway the scent and the murmur usurp my wholemind with a vivid memory. I am still squatting, but in a dark, fragrant room; and the murmur is still of doves; but the room is inthe cool, still heart of the Queen's Golden Monastery in northernBurma, within storm-sound of Tibet, and the doves are perched amongthe glitter and tinkling bells of the pagoda roofs. I am squattingvery quietly, for I am tired, after photographing carved peacocks andjunglefowl in the marvelous fretwork of the outer balconies, Thereare idols all about me--or so it would appear to a missionary; for mypart, I can think only of the wonderful face of the old Lama who sitsnear me, a face peaceful with the something for which most of us woulddesert what we are doing, if by that we could attain it. Near him aretwo young priests, sitting as motionless as the Buddha in front ofthem. 

After a half-hour of the strange thing that we call time, the Lamaspeaks, very low and very; softly:

"The surface of the mirror is clouded with a breath. "

Out of a long silence one of the neophytes replies, "The mirror can bewiped clear. "

Again the world becomes incense and doves, --in the silence and peaceof that monastery, it may have been a few minutes or a decade, --andthe second Tibetan whispers, "There is no need to wipe the mirror. "

When I have left behind the world of inharmonious colors, of pollutedwaters, of soot-stained walls and smoke-tinged air, the green ofjungle comes like a cooling bath of delicate tints and shades. I thinkof all the green things I have loved--of malachite in matrix andtable-top; of jade, not factory-hewn baubles, but age-mellowedsignets, fashioned by lovers of their craft, and seasoned by thetoying yellow fingers of generations of forgotten Chineseemperors--jade, as Dunsany would say, of the exact shade of the rightcolor. I think too, of dainty emerald scarves that are seen and lostin a flash at a dance; of the air-cooled, living green of curlingbreakers; of a lonely light that gleams to starboard of an unknownpassing vessel, and of the transparent green of northern lights thatflicker and play on winter nights high over the garish glare ofBroadway. 

Now, in late afternoon, when I opened my eyes in the little gorge, thesoft green vibrations merged insensibly with the longer waves of thedoves' voices and with the dying odor. Soon the green alone wasdominant; and when I had finished thinking of pleasant, far-off greenthings, the wonderful emerald of my great tree-frog of last year cameto mind, --Gawain the mysterious, --and I wondered if I should eversolve his life. 

In front of me was a little jungle rainpool. At the base of theminiature precipice of the gorge, this pool was a thing of clay. Itwas milky in consistence, from the roiling of suspended clay; andwhen the surface caught a glint of light and reflected it, only theclay and mud walls about came to the eye. It was a very regular pool, a man's height in diameter, and, for all I knew, from two inches totwo miles deep. I became absorbed in a sort of subaquatic mirage, inwhich I seemed to distinguish reflections beneath the surface. My eyesrefocused with a jerk, and I realized that something had unconsciouslybeen perceived by my rods and cones, and short-circuited to my dullerbrain. Where a moment before was an unbroken translucent surface, werenow thirteen strange beings who had appeared from the depths, and weremumbling oxygen with trembling lips. 

In days to come, through all the months, I should again and again besurprised and cheated and puzzled--all phases of delight in the beingswho share the earth's life with me. This was one of the first of theyear, and I stiffened into one large eye. 

I did not know whether they were fish, fairy shrimps, or frogs; I hadnever seen anything like them, and they were wholly unexpected. I somuch desired to know what they were, that I sat quietly--as I enjoykeeping a treasured letter to the last, or reserving the frostinguntil the cake is eaten. It occurred to me that, had it not been forthe Kaiser, I might have been forbidden this mystery; a chain ofoccurrences: Kaiser--war--submarines--glass-shortage fordreadnoughts--mica port-holes needed--Guiana prospector--abandonedpits--rainy season--mysterious tenants--me!

When I squatted by the side of the pool, no sign of life was visible. Far up through the green foliage of the jungle I could see a solidceiling of cloud, while beneath me the liquid clay of the pool wasequally opaque and lifeless. As a seer watches the surface of hiscrystal ball, so I gazed at my six-foot circle of milky water. Myshift forward was like the fall of a tree: it brought into existenceabout it a temporary circle of silence and fear--a circle whoseperiphery began at once to contract; and after a few minutes the gorgeagain accepted me as a part of its harmless self. A huge bee zoomedpast, and just behind my head a hummingbird beat the air into a frothof sound, as vibrant as the richest tones of a cello. My concentratedinterest seemed to become known to the life of the surrounding glade, and I was bombarded with sight, sound, and odor, as if on purpose todistract my attention. But I remained unmoved, and indications of rareand desirable beings passed unheeded. 

A flotilla of little water-striders came rowing themselves along, racing for a struggling ant which had fallen into the milky quicksand. These were in my line of vision, so I watched them for a while, letting the corner of my eye keep guard for the real aristocrats ofthe milky sea--whoever they were. My eye was close enough, myelevation sufficiently low to become one with the water-striders, andto become excited over the adventures of these little petrels; and inmy absorption I almost forgot my chief quest. As soaring birds seem attimes to rest against the very substance of cloud, as if upheld bysome thin lift of air, so these insects glided as easily and skimmedas swiftly upon the surface film of water. I did not know even thegenus of this tropical form; but insect taxonomists have beenparticularly happy in their given names--I recalled _Hydrobates_, _Aquarius_, and _remigis_. 

The spur-winged jacanas are very skilful in their dainty treading ofwater-lily leaves; but here were good-sized insects rowing about onthe water itself. They supported themselves on the four hinder legs, rowing with the middle pair, and steering with the hinder ones, whilethe front limbs were held aloft ready for the seizing of prey. Iwatched three of them approach the ant, which was struggling to reachthe shore, and the first to reach it hesitated not a moment, butleaped into the air from a take-off of mere aqueous surface film, landed full upon the drowning unfortunate, grasped it, and at the sameinstant gave a mighty sweep with its oars, to escape from itspursuing, envious companions. Off went the twelve dimples, marking theaquatic footprints of the trio of striders; and as the bearer of theant dodged one of its own kind, it was suddenly threatened by a small, jet submarine of a diving beetle. At the very moment when the pursuitwas hottest, and it seemed anybody's ant, I looked aside, and thelittle water-bugs passed from my sight forever--for scattered over thesurface were seven strange, mumbling mouths. Close as I was, theirnature still eluded me. At my slightest movement all vanished, notwith the virile splash of a fish or the healthy roll and dip of aporpoise, but with a weird, vertical withdrawing--the sevendissolving into the milk to join their six fellows. 

This was sufficient to banish further meditative surmising, and Icrept swiftly to a point of vantage, and with sweep-net awaited theirreappearance. It was five minutes before faint, discolored spotsindicated their rising, and at least two minutes more before theyactually disturbed the surface. With eight or nine in view, I dippedquickly and got nothing. Then I sank my net deeply and waited again. This time ten minutes passed, and then I swept deep and swiftly, anddrew up the net with four flopping, struggling super-tadpoles. Theystruggled for only a moment, and then lay quietly waiting for whatmight be sent by the guardian of the fate of tadpoles--surely somequaint little god-relation of Neptune, Pan, and St. Vitus. Gentlyshunted into a glass jar, these surprising tads accepted the newenvironment with quiet philosophy; and when I reached the laboratoryand transferred them again, they dignifiedly righted themselves in theswirling current, and hung in mid-aquarium, waiting--forever waiting. 

It was difficult to think of them as tadpoles, when the word broughtto mind hosts of little black wrigglers filling puddles and swamps ofour northern country. These were slow-moving, graceful creatures, partly transparent, partly reflecting every hue of the spectrum, withbroad, waving scarlet and hyaline fins, and strange, fish-like mouthsand eyes. Their habits were as unpollywoglike as their appearance. Ivisited their micaceous pool again and again; and if I could havespent days instead of hours with them, no moment of ennui would haveintervened. 

My acquaintanceship with tadpoles in the past had not aroused me toenthusiasm in the matter of their mental ability; as, for example, theinmates of the next aquarium to that of the Redfins, where I kept aherd or brood or school of Short-tailed Blacks--pollywogs of the GiantToad (_Bufo marinus_). At earliest dawn they swam aimlessly about andmumbled; at high noon they mumbled and still swam; at midnight theyrefused to be otherwise occupied. It was possible to alarm them; buteven while they fled they mumbled. 

In bodily form my Redfins were fish, but mentally they had advanced alittle beyond the usual tadpole train of reactions, reaching forwardtoward the varied activities of the future amphibian. One noticeablething was their segregation, whether in the mica pools, or in twoother smaller ones near by, in which I found them. Each held a pureculture of Redfins, and I found that this was no accident, but aidedand enforced by the tads themselves. Twice, while I watched them, Isaw definite pursuit of an alien pollywog, --the larva of theScarlet-thighed Leaf-walker (_Phyllobates inguinalis_), --which fledheadlong. The second time the attack was so persistent that the lessertadpole leaped from the water, wriggled its way to a damp heap ofleaves, and slipped down between them. For tadpoles to take suchaction as this was as reasonable as for an orchid to push a fellowblossom aside on the approach of a fertilizing hawk-moth. Thismomentary co-operation, and the concerted elimination of the undesiredtadpole, affected me as the thought of the first consciousness ofpower of synchronous rhythm coming to ape men: it seemed a spark oftadpole genius--an adumbration of possibilities which now would end inthe dull consciousness of the future frog, but which might, in pastages, have been a vital link in the development of an ancestralEreops. 

My Redfins were assuredly no common tadpoles, and an intolerantpollywog offers worthy research for the naturalist. Straining theirmedium of its opacity, I drew off the clayey liquid and replaced itwith the clearer brown, wallaba-stained water of the Mazaruni; andthereafter all their doings, all their intimacies, were at my mercy. Ifelt as must have felt the first aviator who flew unheralded over anoriental city, with its patios and house-roofs spread naked beneathhim. 

It was on one of the early days of observation that an astoundingthought came to me--before I had lost perspective in intensivewatching, before familiarity had assuaged some of the marvel of thesesuper-tadpoles. Most of those in my jar were of a like size, justshort of an inch; but one was much larger, and correspondinglygorgeous in color and graceful in movement. As she swept slowly pastmy line of vision, she turned and looked, first at me, then up at thelimits of her world, with a slow deliberateness and a hint ofexpression which struck deep into my memory. Green came tomind, --something clad in a smock of emerald, with a waist-coat ofmother-of-pearl, and great sprawling arms, --and I found myselfthinking of Gawain, our mystery frog of a year ago, who came withoutwarning, and withheld all the secrets of his life. And I glanced againat this super-tad, --as unlike her ultimate development as the grub isunlike the beetle, --and one of us exclaimed, "It is the same, ornearly, but more delicate, more beautiful; it must be Guinevere. " Andso, probably for the first time in the world, there came to be a pettadpole, one with an absurd name which will forever be moresignificant to us than the term applied by a forgotten herpetologistmany years ago. 

And Guinevere became known to all who had to do with the laboratory. Her health and daily development and color-change were things to beinquired after and discussed; one of us watched her closely and madenotes of her life, one painted every radical development of color andpattern, another photographed her, and another brought her delectablescum. She was waited upon as sedulously as a termite queen. And sherewarded us by living, which was all we asked. 

It is difficult for a diver to express his emotions on paper, andverbal arguments with a dentist are usually one-sided. So must thespirit of a tadpole suffer greatly from handicaps of the flesh. Amumbling mouth and an uncontrollable, flagellating tail, connected bya pinwheel of intestine, are scant material wherewith to attempt newexperiments, whereon to nourish aspirations. Yet the Redfins, astypified by Guinevere, have done both, and given time enough, they mayemulate or surpass the achievements of larval axolotls, or theastounding egg-producing maggots of certain gnats, thus realizing allthe possibilities of froghood while yet cribbed within the lowlycasing of a pollywog. 

In the first place Guinevere had ceased being positively thigmotactic, and, writing as a technical herpetologist, I need add no more. Infact, all my readers, whether Batrachologists or Casuals, will agreethat this is an unheard-of achievement. But before I loosen thetechnical etymology and become casually more explicit, let me holdthis term in suspense a moment, as I once did, fascinated by the sheersound of the syllables, as they first came to my ears years ago in auniversity lecture. There is that of possibility in being positivelythigmotactic which makes one dread the necessity of exposing andlimiting its meaning, of digging down to its mathematically accurateroots. It could never be called a flower of speech: it is an over-ripefruit rather: heavy-stoned, thin-fleshed--an essentially practicalterm. It is eminently suited to its purpose, and so widely used thatmy friend the editor must accept it; not looking askance as he did atmy definition of a vampire as a vespertilial anæsthetist, or breakinginto open but wholly ineffectual rebellion, at the past tense of theverb to candelabra. I admit that the conjugation

 I candelabra You candelabra He candelabras

arouses a ripple of confusion in the mind; but it is far moreimportant to use words than to parse them, anyway, so I acclaimperfect clarity for "The fireflies candelabraed the trees!"

Not to know the precise meaning of being positively thigmotactic is astimulant to the imagination, which opens the way to an entire essayon the disadvantages of education--a thought once strongly aroused bythe glorious red-and-gold hieroglyphic signs of the Pekingmerchants--signs which have always thrilled me more than the utmostefforts of our modern psychological advertisers. 

Having crossed unconsciously by such a slender etymological bridgefrom my jungle tadpole to China, it occurs to me that the Chinese arethe most positively thigmotactic people in the world. I have walkedthrough block after block of subterranean catacombs, beneath citystreets which were literally packed full of humanity, and I have seenhot mud pondlets along the Min River wholly eclipsed by shiveringChinamen packed sardinewise, twenty or thirty in layers, or radiatinglike the spokes of a great wheel which has fallen into the mud. 

From my brood of Short-tailed Blacks, a half-dozen tadpoles wanderedoff now and then, each scum-mumbling by himself. Shortly hispositivism asserted itself and back he wriggled, twisting in and outof the mass of his fellows, or at the approach of danger nuzzling intothe dead leaves at the bottom, content only with the feeling ofsomething pressing against his sides and tail. His physical make-up, simple as it is, has proved perfectly adapted to this touch system oflife: flat-bottomed, with rather narrow, paddle-shaped tail-finswhich, beginning well back of the body, interfere in no way with thepollywog's instincts, he can thigmotact to his heart's content. Hiseyes are also adapted to looking upward, discerning dimly dangersfrom above, and whatever else catches the attention of a bottom-lovingpollywog. His mouth is well below, as best suits bottom mumbling. 

Compared with these _polloi_ pollywogs, Redfins were as hummingbirdsto quail. Their very origin was unique; for while the toad tadpoleswriggled their way free from egg gelatine deposited in the wateritself, the Redfins were literally rained down. Within a folded leafthe parents left the eggs--a leaf carefully chosen as overhanging asuitable ditch, or pit, or puddle. If all signs of weather and seasonfailed and a sudden drought set in, sap would dry, leaf would shrivel, and the pitiful gamble for life of the little jungle frogs would belost; the spoonful of froth would collapse bubble by bubble, and, finally, a thin dry film on the brown leaf would in turn vanish, andGuinevere and her companions would never have been. 

But untold centuries of unconscious necessity have made thesetree-frogs infallible weather prophets, and the liberating rain soonsifted through the jungle foliage. In the streaming drops whichfunneled from the curled leaf, tadpole after tadpole hurtled downwardand splashed headlong into the water; their parents and the rain andgravitation had performed their part, and from now on fate lay withthe super-tads themselves--except when a passing naturalist broughtnew complications, new demands of Karma, as strange and unpredictableas if from another planet or universe. 

Only close examination showed that these were tadpoles, not fish, judged by the staring eyes, and broad fins stained above and belowwith orange-scarlet--colors doomed to oblivion in the native, milkywaters, but glowing brilliantly in my aquarium. Although they wereprovided with such an expanse of fin, the only part used for ordinaryprogression was the extreme tip, a mere threadlike streamer, whichwhipped in never-ending spirals, lashing forward, backward, andsideways. So rapid was this motion, and so short the flagellum, thatthe tadpole did not even tremble or vibrate as it moved, but forgedsteadily onward, without a tremor. 

The head was buffy yellow, changing to bittersweet orange back of theeyes and on the gills. The body was dotted with a host of minutespecks of gold and silver. On the sides and below, this gave place toa rich bronze, and then to a clear, iridescent silvery blue. The eyeproper was silvery white, but the upper part of the eyeball fairlyglowed with color. In front it was jet black flecked with gold, merging behind into a brilliant blue. Yet this patch of jeweled tissuewas visible only rarely as the tadpole turned forward, and in theopaque liquid of the mica pool must have ever been hidden. And even ifplainly seen, of what use was a shred of rainbow to a sexless tadpolein the depths of a shady pool!

With high-arched fins, beginning at neck and throat, body compressedas in a racing yacht, there could be no bottom life for Guinevere. Whenever she touched a horizontal surface, --whether leaf or twig, --shecareened; when she sculled through a narrow passage in the floatingalgæ, her fins bent and rippled as they were pressed bodywards. So sheand her fellow brood lived in mid-aquarium, or at most rested lightlyagainst stem or glass, suspended by gentle suction of the complexmouth. Once, when I inserted a long streamer of delicate water-weed, it remained upright, like some strange tree of carboniferous memory. After an hour I found this the perching-place of fourteen Redfin tads, and at the very summit was Guinevere. The rest were arranged nearlyin altitudinal size--two large tadpoles being close below Guinevere, and a bevy of six tiny chaps lowest down. All were lightly poised, swaying in mid-water, at a gently sloping angle, like some unheard-of, orange-stained, aquatic autumn foliage. 

For two weeks Guinevere remained almost as I have described her, gaining slightly in size, but with little alteration of color orpattern. Then came the time of the great change: we felt it to beimminent before any outward signs indicated its approach. And for fourmore days there was no hint except the sudden growth of the hind legs. From tiny dangling appendages with minute toes and indefinite knees, they enlarged and bent, and became miniature but perfect frog's limbs. 

She had now reached a length of two inches, and her delicate colorsand waving fins made her daily more marvelous. The strange thing aboutthe hind limbs was that, although so large and perfect, they werequite useless. They could not even be unflexed; and other merepollywogs near by were wriggling toes, calves, and thighs while yetthese were but imperfect buds. When she dived suddenly, the toesoccasionally moved a little; but as a whole, they merely sagged anddrifted like some extraneous things entangled in the body. 

Smoothly and gracefully Guinevere moved about the aquarium. Her gillslifted and closed rhythmically--twice as slowly as compared with thethree or four times every second of her breathless young tadpolehood. Several times on the fourteenth day, she came quietly to the surfacefor a gulp of air. 

Looking at her from above, two little bulges were visible on eitherside of the body--the ensheathed elbows pressing outward. Twice, whenshe lurched forward in alarm, I saw these front limbs jerkspasmodically; and when she was resting quietly, they rubbed andpushed impatiently against their mittened tissue. 

And now began a restless shifting, a slow, strange dance in mid-water, wholly unlike any movement of her smaller companions; up and down, slowly revolving on oblique planes, with rhythmical turns andsinkings--this continued for an hour, when I was called for lunch. Andas if to punish me for this material digression and desertion, when Ireturned, in half an hour, the miracle had happened. 

Guinevere still danced in stately cadence, with the other Redfins at adistance going about their several businesses. She danced alone--adance of change, of happenings of tremendous import, of symbolism asmajestic as it was age-old. Here in this little glass aquarium thetadpole Guinevere had just freed her arms--she, with waving scarletfins, watching me with lidless white and staring eyes, still withfish-like, fin-bound body. She danced upright, with new-born armsfolded across her breast, tail-tip flagellating frenziedly, stretchinglong fingers with disks like cymbals, reaching out for the land shehad never trod, limbs flexed for leaps she had never made. 

A few days before and Guinevere had been a fish, then a helplessbiped, and now suddenly, somewhere between my salad and coffee, shebecame an aquatic quadruped. Strangest of all, her hands were mobile, her feet useless; and when the dance was at an end, and she sankslowly to the bottom, she came to rest on the very tips of her twolongest fingers; her legs and toes still drifting high and useless. Just before she ceased, her arms stretched out right froggily, herweird eyes rolled about, and she gulped a mighty gulp of the strangethin medium that covered the surface of her liquid home. 

At midnight of this same day only three things existed in theworld--on my table I turned from the _Bhagavad-Gita_ to Drinkwater's_Reverie_ and back again; then I looked up to the jar of clear waterand watched Guinevere hovering motionless. At six the next morning shewas crouched safely on a bit of paper a foot from the aquarium. Shehad missed the open window, the four-foot drop to the floor, and aneighboring aquarium stocked with voracious fish: surely the gods ofpollywogs were kind to me. The great fins were gone--dissolved intoblobs of dull pink; the tail was a mere stub, the feet drawn close, and a glance at her head showed that Guinevere had become a frogalmost within an hour. Three things I hastened to observe: the pupilsof her eyes were vertical, revealing her genus _Phyllomedusa_ (makingapt our choice of the feminine); by a gentle urging I saw that thefirst and second toes were equal in length; and a glance at her littlehumped back showed a scattering of white calcareous spots, giving theclue to her specific personality--_bicolor_: thus were we introducedto _Phyllomedusa bicolor_, alias Guinevere, and thus was establishedbeyond doubt her close relationship to Gawain. 

During that first day, within three hours, during most of which Iwatched her closely, Guinevere's change in color was beyond belief. For an hour she leaped from time to time; but after that, and for therest of her life, she crept in strange unfroglike fashion, raised highon all four limbs, with her stubby tail curled upward, and reachingout one weird limb after another. If one's hand approached within afoot, she saw it and stretched forth appealing, skinny fingers. 

At two o'clock she was clad in a general cinnamon buff; then a shadeof glaucous green began to creep over head and upper eyelids, onwardover her face, finally coloring body and limbs. Beneath, the littlepollyfrog fairly glowed with bright apricot orange, throat and tailamparo purple, mouth green, and sides rich pale blue. To this maze ofcolor we must add a strange, new expression, born of the prominenteyes, together with the line of the mouth extending straight back witha final jeering, upward lift; in front, the lower lip thick andprotruding, which, with the slanting eyes, gave a leering, devilishsmirk, while her set, stiff, exact posture compelled a vivid thoughtof the sphinx. Never have I seen such a remarkable combination. Itfascinated us. We looked at Guinevere, and then at the tadpolesswimming quietly in their tank, and evolution in its wildestconceptions appeared a tame truism. 

This was the acme of Guinevere's change, the pinnacle of herdevelopment. Thereafter her transformations were rhythmical, alternating with the day and night. Through the nights of activity shewas garbed in rich, warm brown. With the coming of dawn, as sheclimbed slowly upward, her color shifted through chestnut to maroon;this maroon then died out on the mid-back to a delicate, dullviolet-blue, which in turn became obscured in the sunlight byturquoise, which crept slowly along the sides. Carefully andlaboriously she clambered up, up to the topmost frond, and thereperformed her little toilet, scraping head and face with her hands, passing the hinder limbs over her back to brush off every grain ofsand. The eyes had meanwhile lost their black-flecked, golden, nocturnal iridescence, and had gradually paled to a clear silveryblue, while the great pupil of darkness narrowed to a slit. 

Little by little her limbs and digits were drawn in out of sight, andthe tiny jeweled being crouched low, hoping for a day of comfortableclouds, a little moisture, and a swift passage of time to the nextperiod of darkness, when it was fitting and right for Guineveres toseek their small meed of sustenance, to grow to frog's full estate, and to fulfil as well as might be what destiny the jungle offered. Tounravel the meaning of it all is beyond even attempting. The breath ofmist ever clouds the mirror, and only as regards a tiny segment of thelife-history of Guinevere can I say, "There is no need to wipe themirror. "

VII

A JUNGLE LABOR-UNION

Pterodactyl Pups led me to the wonderful Attas--the most astounding ofthe jungle labor-unions. We were all sitting on the Mazaruni bank, thenight before the full moon, immediately in front of my British Guianalaboratory. All the jungle was silent in the white light, with now andthen the splash of a big river fish. On the end of the bench was themonosyllabic Scot, who ceased the exquisite painting of morabuttresses and jungle shadows only for the equal fascination ofsearching bats for parasites. Then the great physician, who had comesix thousand miles to peer into the eyes of birds and lizards in mydark-room, working with a gentle hypnotic manner that made the littlebeings seem to enjoy the experience. On my right sat an army captain, who had given more thought to the possible secrets of Frenchchaffinches than to the approaching barrage. There was also theartist, who could draw a lizard's head like a Japanese print, butpreferred to depict impressionistic Laocoön roots. 

These and others sat with me on the long bench and watched themoonpath. The conversation had begun with possible former life on themoon, then shifted to Conan Doyle's _The Lost World_, based on thegreat Roraima plateau, a hundred and fifty miles west of where we weresitting. Then we spoke of the amusing world-wide rumor, which hadstarted no one knows how, that I had recently discovered apterodactyl. One delightful result of this had been a letter from alittle English girl, which would have made a worthy chapter-subjectfor _Dream Days_. For years she and her little sister had peopled awood near her home with pterodactyls, but had somehow never quite seenone; and would I tell her a little about them--whether they hadscales, or made nests; so that those in the wood might be a littleeasier to recognize. 

When strange things are discussed for a long time, in the light of atropical moon, at the edge of a dark, whispering jungle, the mindbecomes singularly imaginative and receptive; and, as I looked throughpowerful binoculars at the great suspended globe, the dead craters andprecipices became very vivid and near. Suddenly, without warning, there flapped into my field, a huge shapeless creature. It was nobird, and there was nothing of the bat in its flight--the wings movedwith steady rhythmical beats, and drove it straight onward. The wingswere skinny, the body large and of a pale ashy hue. For a moment I wasshaken. One of the others had seen it, and he, too, did not speak, butconcentrated every sense into the end of the little tubes. By the timeI had begun to find words, I realized that a giant fruit bat had flownfrom utter darkness across my line of sight; and by close watching wesoon saw others. But for a very few seconds these Pterodactyl Pups, asI nicknamed them, gave me all the thrill of a sudden glimpse into thelife of past ages. The last time I had seen fruit bats was in thegardens of Perideniya, Ceylon. I had forgotten that they occurred inGuiana, and was wholly unprepared for the sight of bats a yard across, with a heron's flight, passing high over the Mazaruni in themoonlight. 

The talk ended on the misfortune of the configuration of humananatomy, which makes sky-searching so uncomfortable a habit. Thisoutlook was probably developed to a greater extent during the warthan ever before; and I can remember many evenings in Paris and Londonwhen a sinister half-moon kept the faces of millions turnedsearchingly upward. But whether in city or jungle, sky-scanning is aneck-aching affair. 

The following day my experience with the Pterodactyl Pups was notforgotten, and as a direct result of looking out for soaring vulturesand eagles, with hopes of again seeing a white-plumaged King and theregal Harpy, I caught sight of a tiny mote high up in mid-sky. Ithought at first it was a martin or swift; but it descended, slowlyspiraling, and became too small for any bird. With a final, long, descending curve, it alighted in the compound of our bungalowlaboratory and rested quietly--a great queen of the leaf-cutting Attasreturning from her marriage flight. After a few minutes she stirred, walked a few steps, cleaned her antennæ, and searched nervously abouton the sand. A foot away was a tiny sprig of indigo, the offspring ofsome seed planted two or three centuries ago by a thrifty Dutchman. Inthe shade of its three leaves the insect paused, and at once beganscraping at the sand with her jaws. She loosened grain after grain, and as they came free they were moistened, agglutinated, and pressedback against her forelegs. When at last a good-sized ball was formed, she picked it up, turned around and, after some fussy indecision, deposited it on the sand behind her. Then she returned to the veryshallow, round depression, and began to gather a second ball. 

I thought of the first handful of sand thrown out for the base ofCheops, of the first brick placed in position for the Great Wall, of afresh-cut trunk, rough-hewn and squared for a log-cabin on Manhattan;of the first shovelful of earth flung out of the line of the PanamaCanal. Yet none seemed worthy of comparison with even what little Iknew of the significance of this ant's labor, for this was earnest ofwhat would make trivial the engineering skill of Egyptians, of Chinesepatience, of municipal pride and continental schism. 

Imagine sawing off a barn-door at the top of a giant sequoia, growingat the bottom of the Grand Cañon, and then, with five or six childrenclinging to it, descending the tree, and carrying it up the cañonwalls against a subway rush of rude people, who elbowed and pushedblindly against you. This is what hundreds of leaf-cutting antsaccomplish daily, when cutting leaves from a tall bush, at the foot ofthe bank near the laboratory. 

There are three dominant labor-unions in the jungle, all socialinsects, two of them ants, never interfering with each other's fieldof action, and all supremely illustrative of conditions resulting fromabsolute equality, free-and-equalness, communalism, socialism carriedto the (forgive me!) anth power. The Army Ants are carnivorous, predatory, militant nomads; the Termites are vegetarian scavengers, sedentary, negative and provincial; the Attas, or leaf-cutting ants, are vegetarians, active and dominant, and in many ways the mostinteresting of all. 

The casual observer becomes aware of them through their raids upongardens; and indeed the Attas are a very serious menace to agriculturein many parts of the tropics, where their nests, although underground, may be as large as a house and contain millions of individuals. Whiletheir choice among wild plants is exceedingly varied, it seems thatthere are certain things they will not touch; but when anyhuman-reared flower, vegetable, shrub, vine, or tree is planted, theAttas rejoice, and straightway desert the native vegetation to fallupon the newcomers. Their whims and irregular feeding habits make itdifficult to guard against them. They will work all round a garden forweeks, perhaps pass through it _en route_ to some tree that they aredefoliating, and then suddenly, one night, every Atta in the worldseems possessed with a desire to work havoc, and at daylight the nextmorning, the garden looks like winter stubble--a vast expanse of stemsand twigs, without a single remaining leaf. Volumes have been written, and a whole chemist's shop of deadly concoctions devised, forcombating these ants, and still they go steadily on, gathering leaveswhich, as we shall see, they do not even use for food. 

Although essentially a tropical family, Attas have pushed as far northas New Jersey, where they make a tiny nest, a few inches across, andbring to it bits of pine needles. 

In a jungle Baedeker, we should double-star these insects, and paragraphthem as "_Atta_, named by Fabricius in 1804; the Kartabo species, _cephalotes_; Leaf-cutting or Cushie or Parasol Ants; very abundant. _Atta_, a subgenus of _Atta_, which is a genus of _Attii_, which is a tribe of _Myrmicinæ_, which is a subfamily of_Formicidæ_, " etc. 

With a feeling of slightly greater intimacy, of mental possession, weset out, armed with a name of one hundred and seventeen years'standing, and find a big Atta worker carving away at a bit of leaf, exactly as his ancestors had done for probably one hundred andseventeen thousand years. 

We gently lift him from his labor, and a drop of chloroform banishesfrom his ganglia all memory of the hundred thousand years of pruning. Under the lens his strange personality becomes manifest, and we wonderwhether the old Danish zoölogist had in mind the slender toe-tipswhich support him, or in a chuckling mood made him a namesake of C. Quintius Atta. A close-up shows a very comic little being, encased ina prickly, chestnut-colored armor, which should make him fearless in aden of a hundred anteaters. The front view of his head is a bitmephistophelian, for it is drawn upward into two horny spines; but theside view recalls a little girl with her hair brushed very tightly upand back from her face. 

The connection between Atta and the world about him is furnished bythis same head: two huge, flail-shaped antennæ arching up like aerial, detached eyebrows--vehicles, through their golden pile, of senseswhich foil our most delicate tests. Outside of these are two littleshoe-button eyes; and we are not certain whether they reflect to thehead ganglion two or three hundred bits of leaf, or one large mosaicleaf. Below all is swung the pair of great scythes, so edged and hungthat they can function as jaws, rip-saws, scissors, forceps, andclamps. The thorax, like the head of a titanothere, bears three pairsof horns--a great irregular expanse of tumbled, rock-like skin andthorn, a foundation for three pairs of long legs, and shelteringsomewhere in its heart a thread of ant-life; finally, two littlepedicels lead to a rounded abdomen, smaller than the head. ThisThird-of-an-inch is a worker Atta to the physical eye; and if we catchanother, or ten, or ten million, we find that some are small, othersmuch larger, but that all are cast in the same mold, allindistinguishable except, perhaps, to the shoe-button eyes. 

When a worker has traveled along the Atta trails, and has followed thetemporary mob-instinct and climbed bush or tree, the sameirresistible force drives him out upon a leaf. Here, apparently, instinct slightly loosens its hold, and he seems to become individualfor a moment, to look about, and to decide upon a suitable edge orcorner of green leaf. But even in this he probably has no choice. Atany rate, he secures a good hold and sinks his jaws into the tissue. Standing firmly on the leaf, he measures his distance by cuttingacross a segment of a circle, with one of his hind feet as a center. This gives a very true curve, and provides a leaf-load of suitablesize. He does not scissor his way across, but bit by bit sinks the tipof one jaw, hook-like, into the surface, and brings the other up toit, slicing through the tissue with surprising ease. He stands uponthe leaf, and I always expect to see him cut himself and his loadfree, Irishman-wise. But one or two of his feet have invariablysecured a grip on the plant, sufficient to hold him safely. Even ifone or two of his fellows are at work farther down the leaf, he haspower enough in his slight grip to suspend all until they havefinished and clambered up over him with their loads. 

Holding his bit of leaf edge-wise, he bends his head down as far aspossible, and secures a strong purchase along the very rim. Then, ashe raises his head, the leaf rises with it, suspended high over hisback, out of the way. Down the stem or tree-trunk he trudges, headfirst, fighting with gravitation, until he reaches the ground. After afew feet, or, measured by his stature, several hundred yards, hisinfallible instinct guides him around pebble boulders, mossy orchards, and grass jungles to a specially prepared path. 

Thus in words, in sentences, we may describe the cutting of a singleleaf; but only in the imagination can we visualize the cell-like orcrystal-like duplication of this throughout all the great forests ofGuiana and of South America. As I write, a million jaws snip throughtheir stint; as you read, ten million Attas begin on new bits of leaf. And all in silence and in dim light, legions passing along the littlejungle roads, unending lines of trembling banners, a political paradeof ultra socialism, a procession of chlorophyll floats illustratingunreasoning unmorality, a fairy replica of "Birnam Forest come toDunsinane. "

In their leaf-cutting, Attas have mastered mass, but not form. I havenever seen one cut off a piece too heavy to carry, but many ahard-sliced bit has had to be deserted because of the configurationof the upper edge. On almost any trail, an ant can be found with atwo-inch stem of grass, attempting to pass under a twig an inchoverhead. After five or ten minutes of pushing, backing, and pulling, he may accidentally march off to one side, or reach up and climb over;but usually he drops his burden. His little works have been wound up, and set at the mark "home"; and though he has now dropped the prizefor which he walked a dozen ant-miles, yet any idea of cutting anotherstem, or of picking up a slice of leaf from those lying along thetrail, never occurs to him. He sets off homeward, and if any emotionof sorrow, regret, disappointment, or secret relief troubles hisganglia, no trace of it appears in antennæ, carriage, or speed. I canvery readily conceive of his trudging sturdily all the way back to thenest, entering it, and going to the place where he would have dumpedhis load, having fulfilled his duty in the spirit at least. Then, ifthere comes a click in his internal time-clock, he may set out uponanother quest--more cabined, cribbed, and confined than any member ofa Cook's tourist party. 

I once watched an ant with a piece of leaf which had a regularshepherd's crook at the top, and if his adventures of fifty feet couldhave been caught on a moving-picture film, Charlie Chaplin would havehad an arthropod rival. It hooked on stems and pulled its bearer offhis feet, it careened and ensnared the leaves of other ants, at oneplace mixing up with half a dozen. A big thistledown became tangled init, and well-nigh blew away with leaf and all; hardly a foot of hispath was smooth-going. But he persisted, and I watched him reach thenest, after two hours of tugging and falling and interference withtraffic. 

Occasionally an ant will slip in crossing a twiggy crevasse, and hisleaf become tightly wedged. After sprawling on his back and vainlyclawing at the air for a while, he gets up, brushes off his antennæ, and sets to work. For fifteen minutes I have watched an Atta in thispredicament, stodgily endeavoring to lift his leaf while standing onit at the same time. The equation of push equaling pull is fourthdimensional to the Attas. 

With all this terrible expenditure of energy, the activities of theseants are functional within very narrow limits. The blazing sun causesthem to drop their burdens and flee for home; a heavy wind frustratesthem, for they cannot reef. When a gale arises and sweeps an exposedportion of the trail, their only resource is to cut away all sail andheave it overboard. A sudden downpour reduces a thousand banners andwaving, bright-colored petals to débris, to be trodden under foot. Sometimes, after a ten-minute storm, the trails will be carpeted withthousands of bits of green mosaic, which the outgoing hordes willtrample in their search for more leaves. On a dark night little seemsto be done; but at dawn and dusk, and in the moonlight or clearstarlight, the greatest activity is manifest. 

Attas are such unpalatable creatures that they are singularly freefrom dangers. There is a tacit armistice between them and the otherlabor-unions. The army ants occasionally make use of their trails whenthey are deserted; but when the two great races of ants meet, eachantennæs the aura of the other, and turns respectfully aside. Whentermites wish to traverse an Atta trail, they burrow beneath it, orbuild a covered causeway across, through which they pass and repass atwill, and over which the Attas trudge, uncaring and unconscious of itssignificance. 

Only creatures with the toughest of digestions would dare to includethese prickly, strong-jawed, meatless insects in a bill of fare. Nowand then I have found an ani, or black cuckoo, with a few in itsstomach: but an ani can swallow a stinging-haired caterpillar andenjoy it. The most consistent feeder upon Attas is the giant marinetoad. Two hundred Attas in a night is not an uncommon meal, the exactnumber being verifiable by a count of the undigested remains of headsand abdomens. _Bufo marinus_ is the gardener's best friend in thistropic land, and besides, he is a gentleman and a philosopher, if everan amphibian was one. 

While the cutting of living foliage is the chief aim in life of theseants, yet they take advantage of the flotsam and jetsam along theshore, and each low tide finds a column from some nearby nestsalvaging flowerets, leaves, and even tiny berries. A sudden wash oftide lifts a hundred ants with their burdens and then sets them downagain, when they start off as if nothing had happened. 

The paths or trails of the Attas represent very remarkable feats ofengineering, and wind about through jungle and glade for surprisingdistances. I once traced a very old and wide trail for well over twohundred yards. Taking little Third-of-an-inch for a type (although hewould rank as a rather large Atta), and comparing him with a six-footman, we reckon this trail, ant-ratio, as a full twenty-five miles. Belt records a leaf-cutter's trail half a mile long, which would meanthat every ant that went out, cut his tiny bit of leaf, and returned, would traverse a distance of a hundred and sixteen miles. This was anextreme; but our Atta may take it for granted, speaking antly, thatonce on the home trail, he has, at the least, four or five miles aheadof him. 

The Atta roads are clean swept, as straight as possible, and veryconspicuous in the jungle. The chief high-roads leading from verylarge nests are a good foot across, and the white sand of their bedsis visible a long distance away. I once knew a family of opossumsliving in a stump in the center of a dense thicket. When they left atevening, they always climbed along as far as an Atta trail, droppeddown to it, and followed it for twenty or thirty yards. During therains I have occasionally found tracks of agoutis and deer in theseroads. So it would be very possible for the Attas to lay thefoundation for an animal trail, and this, _à la_ calf-path, for thestreet of a future city. 

The part that scent plays in the trails is evidenced if we scatter aninch or two of fresh sand across the road. A mass of ants banksagainst the strange obstruction on both sides, on the one hand a solidphalanx of waving green banners, and on the other a mob of empty-jawedworkers with wildly waving antennæ. Scouts from both sides slowlywander forward, and finally reach one another and pass across. But notfor ten minutes does anything like regular traffic begin again. 

When carrying a large piece of leaf, and traveling at a fair rate ofspeed, the ants average about a foot in ten seconds, although many gothe same distance in five. I tested the speed of an Atta, and then Isaw that its leaf seemed to have a peculiar-shaped bug upon it, andpicked it up with its bearer. Finding the blemish to be only a bit offungus, I replaced it. Half an hour later I was seated by a trail faraway, when suddenly my ant with the blemished spot appeared. It wasunmistakable, for I had noticed that the spot was exactly that of theEgyptian symbol of life. I paced the trail, and found that seventyyards away it joined the spot where I had first seen my friend. So, with occasional spurts, he had done two hundred and ten feet in thirtyminutes, and this in spite of the fact that he had picked up asupercargo. 

Two parts of hydrogen and one of oxygen, under the proper stimulus, invariably result in water; two and two, considered calmly and withoutpassion, combine into four; the workings of instinct, especially insocial insects, is so mechanical that its results can almost bedemonstrated in formula; and yet here was my Atta leaf-carrierburdened with a minim. The worker Attas vary greatly in size, as aglance at a populous trail will show. They have been christened_macrergates, desmergates_ and _micrergates_; or we may call thelargest Maxims, the average middle class Mediums, and the tiny chapsMinims, and all have more or less separate functions in the ecology ofthe colony. The Minims are replicas in miniature of the big chaps, except that their armor is pale cinnamon rather than chestnut. Although they can bite ferociously, they are too small to cut throughleaves, and they have very definite duties in the nest; yet they arefound with every leaf-cutting gang, hastening along with their largerbrethren, but never doing anything, that I could detect, at theirjourney's end. I have a suspicion that the little Minims, who are verynumerous, function as light cavalry; for in case of danger they are aseager at attack as the great soldiers, and the leaf-cutters, absorbedin their arduous labor, would benefit greatly from the immunityensured by a flying corps of their little bulldog comrades. 

I can readily imagine that these nestling Minims become weary andfoot-sore (like bank-clerks guarding a reservoir), and if instinctallows such abominable individuality, they must often wish themselvesback at the nest, for every mile of a Medium is three miles to them. 

Here is where our mechanical formula breaks down; for, often, as manyas one in every five leaves that pass bears aloft a Minim or two, clinging desperately to the waving leaf and getting a free ride at theexpense of the already overburdened Medium. Ten is the extreme numberseen, but six to eight Minims collected on a single leaf is notuncommon. Several times I have seen one of these little banner-ridersshift deftly from leaf to leaf, when a swifter carrier passed by, asa circus bareback rider changes steeds at full gallop. 

Once I saw enacted above ground, and in the light of day, somethingwhich may have had its roots in an _anlage_ of divine discontent. If Iwere describing the episode half a century ago, I should entitle it, "The Battle of the Giants, or Emotion Enthroned. " A quadruple line ofleaf-carriers was disappearing down a hole in front of the laboratory, bumped and pushed by an out-pouring, empty-jawed mass of workers. As Iwatched them, I became aware of an area of great excitement beyond thehole. Getting down as nearly as possible to ant height, I witnessed aterrible struggle. Two giants--of the largest soldier Maximcaste--were locked in each other's jaws, and to my horror, I saw thateach had lost his abdomen. The antennæ and the abdomen petiole are theonly vulnerable portions of an Atta, and long after he has lost theseapparently dispensable portions of his anatomy, he is able to walk, fight, and continue an active but erratic life. These mighty-jawedfellows seem never to come to the surface unless danger threatens; andmy mind went down into the black, musty depths, where it is the dutyof these soldiers to walk about and wait for trouble. What could haveraised the ire of such stolid neuters against one another? Was itsheer lack of something to do? or was there a cell or two of thewinged caste lying fallow within their bodies, which, stirring atlast, inspired a will to battle, a passing echo of romance, of theactivities of the male Atta?

Their unnatural combat had stirred scores of smaller workers to thehighest pitch of excitement. Now and then, out of the mêlée, a Mediumwould emerge, with a tiny Minim in his jaws. One of these carried hisstill living burden many feet away, along an unused trail, and droppedit. I examined the small ant, and found that it had lost an antenna, and its body was crushed. When the ball of fighters cleared, twelvesmall ants were seen clinging to the legs and heads of the mutilatedgiants, and now and then these would loosen their hold on each other, turn, and crush one of their small tormenters. Several times I saw aMedium rush up and tear a small ant away, apparently quite insane withexcitement. 

Occasionally the least exhausted giant would stagger to his four anda half remaining legs, hoist his assailant, together with a mass ofthe midgets, high in air, and stagger for a few steps, before fallingbeneath the onrush of new attackers. It made me wish to help the greatinsect, who, for aught I knew, was doomed because he wasdifferent--because he had dared to be an individual. 

I left them struggling there, and half an hour later, when I returned, the episode was just coming to a climax. My Atta hero was exerting hislast strength, flinging off the pile that assaulted him, fighting allthe easier because of the loss of his heavy body. He lurched forward, dragging the second giant, now dead, not toward the deserted trail orthe world of jungle around him, but headlong into the lines of stupidleaf-carriers, scattering green leaves and flower-petals in alldirections. Only when dozens of ants threw themselves upon him, manyof them biting each other in their wild confusion, did he rear up forthe last time, and, with the whole mob, rolled down into the yawningmouth of the Atta nesting-hole, disappearing from view, and carryingwith him all those hurrying up the steep sides. It was a great battle. I was breathing fast with sympathy, and whatever his cause, I was onhis side. 

The next day both giants were lying on the old, disused trail; therevolt against absolute democracy was over; ten thousand ants passedto and fro without a dissenting thought, or any thought, and theSpirit of the Attas was content. 

VIII

THE ATTAS AT HOME

Clambering through white, pasty mud which stuck to our boots by thepound, peering through bitter cold mist which seemed but a thinnerskim of mud, drenched by flurries of icy drops shaken from theatmosphere by a passing moan and a crash, breathing air heavy with asweet, horrible, penetrating odor--such was the world as it existedfor an hour one night, while I and the Commandant of _Douaumont_wandered about completely lost, on the top of his own fort. We finallystumbled on the little grated opening through which the lookout peeredunceasingly over the landscape of mud. The mist lifted and werediscovered the cave-like entrance, watched for a moment the ominousgolden dumb-bells rising from the premier ligne, scraped our boots ona German helmet and went down again into the strangest sanctuary inthe world. 

This was the vision which flashed through my mind as I began vigil atan enormous nest of Attas--the leaf-cutting ants of the BritishGuiana jungle. In front of me was a glade, about thirty feet across, devoid of green growth, and filled with a great irregular expanse ofearth and mud. Relative to the height of the Attas, my six feet mustseem a good half mile, and from this height I looked down and sawagain the same inconceivably sticky clay of France. There were therain-washed gullies, the half-roofed entrances to the vast undergroundfortresses, clean-swept, perfect roads, as efficient as the arteriesof Verdun, flapping dead leaves like the omnipresent, worn-outscare-crows of camouflage, and over in one corner, to complete thesimile, were a dozen shell-holes, the homes of voracious ant-lions, which, for passing insects, were unexploded mines, set at hairtrigger. 

My Atta city was only two hundred feet away from the laboratory, infairly high jungle, within sound of the dinner triangle, and of thelapping waves on the Mazaruni shore. To sit near by and concentratesolely upon the doings of these ant people, was as easy as watching asingle circus ring of performing elephants, while two more rings, amaze of trapezes, a race track and side-shows were in full swing. Thejungle around me teemed with interesting happenings and distractingsights and sounds. The very last time I visited the nest and becameabsorbed in a line of incoming ants, I heard the shrill squeaking ofan angry hummingbird overhead. I looked up, and there, ten feet above, was a furry tamandua anteater slowly climbing a straight purplehearttrunk, while around and around his head buzzed and swore the littlefury--a pinch of cinnamon feathers, ablaze with rage. The curved clawsof the unheeding anteater fitted around the trunk and the strongprehensile tail flattened against the bark, so that the creatureseemed to put forth no more exertion than if walking along a fallenlog. Now and then it stopped and daintily picked at a bit of termitenest. 

With such side-shows it was sometimes difficult to concentrate on theAttas. Yet they offered problems for years of study. The glade was alittle world in itself, with visitors and tenants, comedy and tragedy, sounds and silences. It was an ant-made glade, with all new growthseither choked by upflung, earthen hillocks, or leaves bitten off assoon as they appeared. The casual visitors were the most conspicuous, an occasional trogon swooping across--a glowing, feathered comet ofemerald, azurite and gold; or, slowly drifting in and out among thevines and coming to rest with waving wings, a yellow and red spottedIthomiid, --or was it a Heliconiid or a Danaiid?--with such bewilderingmodels and marvelous mimics it was impossible to tell without captureand close examination. Giant, purple tarantula-hawks hummed past, scanning the leaves for their prey. 

Another class of glade haunters were those who came strictly onbusiness, --plasterers and sculptors, who found wet clay ready to theirneeds. Great golden and rufous bees blundered down and gouged outbucketsful of mud; while slender-bodied, dainty, ebony wasps, aftermuch fastidious picking of place, would detach a tiny bit of thewhitest clay, place it in their snuff-box holder, clean their feet andantennæ, run their rapier in and out and delicately take to wing. 

Little black trigonid bees had their special quarry, a small deepvalley in the midst of a waste of interlacing Bad Lands, on the sideof a precipitous butte. Here they picked and shoveled to their hearts'content, plastering their thighs until their wings would hardly liftthem. They braced their feet, whirred, lifted unevenly, and sank backwith a jar. Then turning, they bit off a piece of ballast, and heavingit over the precipice, swung off on an even keel. 

Close examination of some of the craters and volcanic-like conesrevealed many species of ants, beetles and roaches searching for bitsof food--the scavengers of this small world. But the most interestingwere the actual parasites, flies of many colors and sizes, hummingpast like little planes and zeppelins over this hidden city, ready todrop a bomb in the form of an egg deposited on the refuse heaps or onthe ants themselves. The explosion might come slowly, but it would benone the less deadly. Once I detected a hint of the complexity of theglade life--beautiful metallic green flies walking swiftly about onlong legs, searching nervously, whose eggs would be deposited nearthose of other flies, their larvæ to feed upon the others--parasitesupon parasites. 

As I had resolutely put the doings of the treetops away from myconsciousness, so now I forgot visitors and parasites, and armedmyself for the excavation of this buried metropolis. I rubbedvaseline on my high boots, and about the tops bound a band ofteased-out absorbent cotton. My pick and shovel I treated likewise, and thus I was comparatively insulated. Without precautions no livingbeing could withstand the slow, implacable attack of disturbed Attas. At present I walked unmolested across the glade. The millions beneathmy feet were as unconscious of my presence as they were of the breezein the palm fronds overhead. 

At the first deep shovel thrust, a slow-moving flood of reddish-brownbegan to pour forth from the crumbled earth--the outposts of the AttaMaxims moving upward to the attack. For a few seconds only workers ofvarious sizes appeared, then an enormous head heaved upward and therecame into the light of day the first Atta soldier. He was twice aslarge as a large worker and heavy in proportion. Instead of beingdrawn up into two spines, the top of his head was rounded, bald andshiny, and only at the back were the two spines visible, shifteddownward. The front of the head was thickly clothed with golden hair, which hung down bang-like over a round, glistening, single, medianeye. One by one, and then shoulder to shoulder, these CyclopeanMaxims lumbered forth to battle, and soon my boots were covered inspite of the grease, all sinking their mandibles deep into theleather. 

When I unpacked these boots this year I found the heads and jaws oftwo Attas still firmly attached, relics of some forgotten foray of thepreceding year. This mechanical, vise-like grip, wholly independent oflife or death, is utilized by the Guiana Indians. In place ofstitching up extensive wounds, a number of these giant Atta Maxims arecollected, and their jaws applied to the edges of the skin, which aredrawn together. The ants take hold, their bodies are snipped off, andthe row of jaws remains until the wound is healed. 

Over and around the out-pouring soldiers, the tiny workers ran and bitand chewed away at whatever they could reach. Dozens of ants madetheir way up to the cotton, but found the utmost difficulty inclambering over the loose fluff. Now and then, however, a needle-likenip at the back of my neck, showed that some pioneer of these shocktroops had broken through, when I was thankful that Attas could onlybite and not sting as well. At such a time as this, the greatestdifference is apparent between these and the Eciton army ants. TheEciton soldier with his long, curved scimitars and his swift, nervousmovements, was to one of these great insects as a fighting d'Artagnanwould be to an armored tank. The results were much the samehowever, --perfect efficiency. 

I now dug swiftly and crashed with pick down through three feet ofsoil. The great entrance arteries of the nest branched and bifurcated, separated and anastomosed, while here and there were chambers varyingin size from a cocoanut to a football. These were filled with whatlooked like soft grayish sponge covered with whitish mold, and thesesomber affairs were the _raison d'être_ for all the leaf-cutting, thetrails, the struggles through jungles, the constant battling againstwind and rain and sun. 

But the labors of the Attas are only renewed when a worker disappearsdown a hole with his hard-earned bit of leaf. He drops it and goes onhis way. We do not know what this way is, but my guess is that heturns around and goes after another leaf. Whatever the nests of Attaspossess, they are without recreation rooms. These sluggard-instructorsdo not know enough to take a vacation; their faces are fashioned forbiting, but not for laughing or yawning. I once dabbed fifteen Mediumswith a touch of white paint as they approached the nest, and withinfive minutes thirteen of them had emerged and started on the backtrack again. 

The leaf is taken in charge by another Medium, hosts of whom areeverywhere. Once after a spadeful, I placed my eye as close aspossible to a small heap of green leaves, and around one oblong bitwere five Mediums, each with a considerable amount of chewed andmumbled tissue in front of him. This is the only time I have eversucceeded in finding these ants actually at this work. The leaves arechewed thoroughly and built up into the sponge gardens, being usedneither for thatch nor for food, but as fertilizer. And not for anystrange subterranean berry or kernel or fruit, but for a fungus ormushroom. The spores sprout and proliferate rapidly, the gray myceliacovering the garden, and at the end of each thread is a little knobbedbody filled with liquid. This forms the sole food of the ants in thenest, but a drop of honey placed by a busy trail will draw a circle ofworkers at any time--both Mediums and Minims, who surround it anddrink their fill. 

When the fungus garden is in full growth, the nest labors of theMinims begin, and until the knobbed bodies are actually ripe, theynever cease to weed and to prune, thus killing off the multitude ofother fungi and foreign organisms, and by pruning they keep theirparticular fungus growing, and prevent it from fructifying. The fungusof the Attas is a particular species with the resonant, Dunsanyesquename of _Rozites gongylophora_. It is quite unknown outside of thenests of these ants, and is as artificial as a banana. 

Only in Calcutta bazaars at night, and in underground streets ofPekin, have I seen stranger beings than I unearthed in my Atta nest. Now and then there rolled out of a shovelful of earth, an unbelievablybig and rotund Cicada larva--which in the course of time, whether inone or in seventeen years, would emerge as the great marbled winged_Cicada gigas_, spreading five inches from tip to tip. Smalltarantulas, with beautiful wine-colored cephalothorax, made their homedeep in the nest, guarded, perhaps, by their dense covering of hair;slender scorpions sidled out from the ruins. They were bare, withvulnerable joints, but they had the advantage of a pair of hands, andlong, mobile arms, which could quickly and skilfully pluck anattacking ant from any part of their anatomy. 

The strangest of all the tenants were the tiny, amber-colored roacheswhich clung frantically to the heads of the great soldier ants, orscurried over the tumultuous mounds, searching for a crevicesanctuary. They were funny, fat little beings, wholly blind, yetsupremely conscious of the danger that threatened, and with only thesingle thought of getting below the surface as quickly as possible. The Attas had very few insect guests, but this cockroach is one whichhad made himself perfectly at home. Through century upon century hehad become more and more specialized and adapted to Atta life, eyesslipping until they were no more than faint specks, legs and antennæchanging, gait becoming altered to whatever speed and carriage bestsuited little guests in big underground halls and galleries. He andhis race had evolved unseen and unnoticed even by the Maxim policemen. But when nineteen hundred humanly historical years had passed, a manwith a keen sense of fitness named him Little Friend of the Attas; andso for a few more years, until scientists give place to the nextcaste, _Attaphila_ will, all unconsciously, bear a name. 

Attaphilas have staked their whole gamble of existence on thecontinued possibility of guest-ship with the Attas. Although theylived near the fungus gardens they did not feed upon them, butgathered secretions from the armored skin of the giant soldiers, whoapparently did not object, and showed no hostility to their diminutivemasseurs. A summer boarder may be quite at home on a farm, and safefrom all ordinary dangers, but he must keep out of the way of scythesand sickles if he chooses to haunt the hay-fields. And so Attaphila, snug and safe, deep in the heart of the nest, had to keep on the quivive when the ant harvesters came to glean in the fungus gardens. Snip, snip, snip, on all sides in the musty darkness, the keenmandibles sheared the edible heads, and though the little Attaphilasdodged and ran, yet most of them, in course of time, lost part of anantenna or even a whole one. 

Thus the Little Friend of the Leaf-cutters lives easily through histerm of weeks or months, or perhaps even a year, and has nothing tofear for food or mate, or from enemies. But Attaphilas cannot alllive in a single nest, and we realize that there must come a crisis, when they pass out into a strange world of terrible light andmultitudes of foes. For these pampered, degenerate roaches to findanother Atta nest unaided, would be inconceivable. In the big nestwhich I excavated I observed them on the back and heads not only ofthe large soldiers, but also of the queens which swarmed in oneportion of the galleries; and indeed, of twelve queens, seven hadroaches clinging to them. This has been noted also of a Brazilianspecies, and we suddenly realize what splendid sports these humbleinsects are. They resolutely prepare for their gamble--_l'aventuremagnifique_--the slenderest fighting chance, and we are almostinclined to forget the irresponsible implacability of instinct, andcheer the little fellows for lining up on this forlorn hope. When thetime comes, the queens leave, and are off up into the unheard-of sky, as if an earthworm should soar with eagle's feathers; past thegauntlet of voracious flycatchers and hawks, to the millionth chanceof meeting an acceptable male of the same species. After the mating, comes the solitary search for a suitable site, and only when thepitifully unfair gamble has been won by a single fortunate queen, does the Attaphila climb tremblingly down and accept what fate hassent. His ninety and nine fellows have met death in almost as manyways. 

With the exception of these strange inmates there are very few tenantsor guests in the nests of the Attas. Unlike the termites and Ecitons, who harbor a host of weird boarders, the leaf-cutters are able to keeptheir nest free from undesirables. 

Once, far down in the nest, I came upon three young queens, recentlyemerged, slow and stupid, with wings dull and glazed, who crawled withawkward haste back into darkness. And again twelve winged females weregrouped in one small chamber, restless and confused. This was the onlyglimpse I ever had of Atta royalty at home. 

Good fortune was with me, however, on a memorable fifth of May, whenreturning from a monkey hunt in high jungle. As I came out into theedge of a clearing, a low humming attracted my attention. It wasventriloquial, and my ear refused to trace it. It sounded exactly likea great aerodrome far in the distance, with a score or more of planestuning up. I chanced to see a large bee-like insect rising throughthe branches, and following back along its path, I suddenly perceivedthe rarest of sights--an Atta nest entrance boiling with theexcitement of a flight of winged kings and queens. So engrossed werethe ants that they paid no attention to me, and I was able to creep upclose and kneel within two feet of the hole. The main nest was twentyfeet away, and this was a special exit made for the occasion--atriumphal gateway erected far away from the humdrum leaf traffic. 

The two-inch, arched hole led obliquely down into darkness, whilebrilliant sunshine illumined the earthen take-off and the surroundingmass of pink Mazaruni primroses. Up this corridor was coming, slowly, with dignity, as befitted the occasion, a pageant of royalty. The kingmales were more active, as they were smaller in size than the females, but they were veritable giants in comparison with the workers. Thequeens seemed like beings of another race, with their great bowedthorax supporting the folded wings, heads correspondingly large, withless jaw development, but greatly increased keenness of vision. Incomparison with the Minims, these queens were as a human being onehundred feet in height. 

I selected one large queen as she appeared and watched her closely. Slowly and with great effort she climbed the steep ascent into theblazing sunlight. Five tiny Minims were clinging to her body andwings, all scrubbing and cleaning as hard as they could. She chose aclear space, spread her wings, wide and flat, stood high upon her sixlegs and waited. I fairly shouted at this change, for slight though itwas, it worked magic, and the queen Atta was a queen no more, but aminiature, straddle-legged aeroplane, pushed into position, andoverrun by a crowd of mechanics, putting the finishing touches, tightening the wires, oiling every pliable crevice. A Medium camealong, tugged at a leg and the obliging little plane lifted it forinspection. For three minutes this kept up, and then the plane becamea queen and moved restlessly. Without warning, as if someirresponsible mechanic had turned the primed propellers, the fourmighty wings whirred--and four Minims were hurled head over heels afoot away, snapped from their positions. The sound of the wings wasalmost too exact an imitation of the snarl of a starting plane--thecomparison was absurd in its exactness of timbre and resonance. It wasonly a test, however, and the moment the queen became quiet the upsetmechanics clambered back. They crawled beneath her, scraped her feetand antennæ, licked her eyes and jaws, and went over every shred ofwing tissue. Then again she buzzed, this time sending only a singleMinim sprawling. Again she stopped after lifting herself an inch, butimmediately started up, and now rose rather unsteadily, but withoutpause, and slowly ascended above the nest and the primroses. Circlingonce, she passed through green leaves and glowing balls of fruit, intothe blue sky. 

Thus I followed the passing of one queen Atta into the jungle world, as far as human eyes would permit, and my mind returned to the motewhich I had detected at an equally great height--the queen descendingafter her marriage--as isolated as she had started. 

We have seen how the little blind roaches occasionally cling to anemerging queen and so are transplanted to a new nest. But the queenbears something far more valuable. More faithfully than ever virgintended temple fires, each departing queen fills a little pouch in thelower part of her mouth with a pellet of the precious fungus, andhere it is carefully guarded until the time comes for its propagationin the new nest. 

When she has descended to earth and excavated a little chamber, shecloses the entrance, and for forty days and nights labors at thefounding of a new colony. She plants the little fungus cutting andtends it with the utmost solicitude. The care and feeding in her pastlife have stored within her the substance for vast numbers of eggs. Nine out of ten which she lays she eats to give her the strength to goon with her labors, and when the first larvæ emerge, they, too, arefed with surplus eggs. In time they pupate and at the end of six weeksthe first workers--all tiny Minims--hatch. Small as they are, born indarkness, yet no education is needed. The Spirit of the Attas infusesthem. Play and rest are the only things incomprehensible to them, andthey take charge at once, of fungus, of excavation, of the care of thequeen and eggs, the feeding of the larvæ, and as soon as the huskierMediums appear, they break through into the upper world and one daythe first bit of green leaf is carried down into the nest. 

The queen rests. Henceforth, as far as we know, she becomes a mereegg-producing machine, fed mechanically by mechanical workers, thefood transformed by physiological mechanics into yolk and thendeposited. The aeroplane has become transformed into an incubator. 

One wonders whether, throughout the long hours, weeks and months, indarkness which renders her eyes a mockery, there ever comes to herdull ganglion a flash of memory of The Day, of the rushing wind, theescape from pursuing puff-birds, the jungle stretching away for milesbeneath, her mate, the cool tap of drops from a passing shower, thevolplane to earth, and the obliteration of all save labor. Did sheonce look behind her, did she turn aside for a second, just to feelthe cool silk of petals?

As we have seen, an Atta worker is a member of the most implacablelabor-union in the world: he believes in a twenty-four hour day, no pay, noplay, no rest--he is a cog in a machine-drivenGood-for-the-greatest-number. After studying these beings for a week, onelongs to go out and shout for kaisers and tsars, for selfishness andcrime--anything as a relief from such terrible unthinking altruism. AllAtta workers are born free and equal--which is well; and they remainso--which is what a Buddhist priest once called "gashang"--or so itsounded, and which he explained as a state where plants and animals and menwere crystal-like in growth and existence. What a welcome sight it would beto see a Medium mount a bit of twig, antennæ a crowd of Minims about him, and start off on a foray of his own!

We may jeer or condemn the Attas for their hard-shell existence, butthere comes to mind again and again, the wonder of it all. Are thehosts of little beings really responsible; have they not evolved intoa pocket, a mental cul-de-sac, a swamping of individuality, poolingtheir personalities? And what is it they have gained--what pledge ofsuccess in food, in safety, in propagation? They are not separateentities, they have none of the freedom of action, of choice, ofindividuality of the solitary wasps. They are the somatic cells of thebody politic, while deep within the nest are the guarded sexualcells--the winged kings and queens, which from time to time, exactlyas in isolated organisms, are thrown off to propagate, and to foundnew nests. They, no less than the workers, are parts of somethingmore subtle than the visible Attas and their material nest. Whether Igo to the ant as sluggard, or myrmocologist, or accidentally, viaPterodactyl Pups, a day spent with them invariably leaves me with mywhole being concentrated on this mysterious Atta Ego. Call itVibration, Aura, Spirit of the nest, clothe ignorance in whatever termseems appropriate, we cannot deny its existence and power. 

As with the Army ants, the flowing lines of leaf-cutters alwaysbrought to mind great arteries, filled with pulsating, tumblingcorpuscles. When an obstruction appeared, as a fallen leaf, across thegreat sandy track, a dozen, or twenty or a hundred workersgathered--like leucocytes--and removed the interfering object. If Iinjured a worker who was about to enter the nest, I inoculated theAtta organism with a pernicious, foreign body. Even the victim himselfwas dimly aware of the law of fitness. Again and again he yielded tothe call of the nest, only to turn aside at the last moment. From anormal link in the endless Atta chain, he had become anoutcast--snapped at by every passing ant, self-banished, wandering offat nightfall to die somewhere in the wilderness of grass. When well, an Atta has relations but no friends, when ill, every jaw is againsthim. 

As I write this seated at my laboratory table, by turning down my lampand looking out, I can see the star dust of Orion's nebula, andwithout moving from my chair, Rigel, Sirius, Capella andBetelgeuze--the blue, white, yellow and red evolution of so-calledlifeless cosmic matter. A few slides from the aquarium at my sidereveal an evolutionary sequence to the heavenly host--the simplest ofearthly organisms playing fast and loose with the borderland, not onlyof plants and animals, but of the one and of the many-celled. First aswimming lily, Stentor, a solitary animal bloom, twenty-five to theinch; Cothurnia, a double lily, and Gonium, with a quartet of cellsclinging tremulously together, progressing unsteadily--materiallytoward the rim of my field of vision--in the evolution of earthly lifetoward sponges, peripatus, ants and man. 

I was interrupted in my microcosmus just as it occurred to me thatChesterton would heartily approve of my approximation of Sirius andStentor, of Capella and Cothurnia--the universe balanced. My attentionwas drawn from the atom Gonium--whose brave little spirit was strivingto keep his foursome one--a primordial struggle toward unity of selfand division of labor; my consciousness climbed the microscope tubeand came to rest upon a slim glass of amber liquid on my laboratorytable: a servant had brought a cocktail, for it was New Year's Eve. (Now the thought came that there were a number of worthy people whowould also approve of this approximation!) I looked at the smallspirituous luxury, and I thought of my friends in New York, and thenof the Attas in front of the laboratory. With my electric flash I wentout into the starlight, and found the usual hosts struggling nestwardwith their chlorophyll burdens, and rushing frantically out into theblack jungle for more and yet more leaves. My mind swept back overevolution from star-dust to Kartabo compound, from Gonium to man, andto these leaf-cutting ants. And I wondered whether the Attas were anythe better for being denied the stimulus of temptation, or whether Iwas any the worse for the opportunity of refusing a second glass. Iwent back into the house, and voiced a toast to tolerance, totemperance, and--to pterodactyls--and drank my cocktail. 

IX

HAMMOCK NIGHTS

There is a great gulf between pancakes and truffles: an eternal, fixed, abysmal cañon. It is like the chasm between beds and hammocks. It is not to be denied and not to be traversed; for if pancakes withsyrup are a necessary of life, then truffles with anything must be, bythe very nature of things, a supreme and undisputed luxury, a regalfood for royalty and the chosen of the earth. There cannot be a shadowof a doubt that these two are divided; and it is not alone a merearbitrary division of poverty and riches as it would appear on thesurface. It is an alienation brought about by profound and fundamentaldifferences; for the gulf between them is that gulf which separatesthe prosaic, the ordinary, the commonplace, from all that is coloredand enlivened by romance. 

The romance of truffles endows the very word itself with a halo, anaristocratic halo full of mystery and suggestion. One remembers thehunters who must track their quarry through marshy and treacherouslands, and one cannot forget their confiding catspaw, that desolatedpig, created only to be betrayed and robbed of the fungi of hislabors. He is one of the pathetic characters of history, born tosecret sorrow, victimized by those superior tastes which do not becomehis lowly station. Born to labor and to suffer, but not to eat. Tothis day he commands my sympathy; his ghost--lean, bourgeois, reproachful--looks out at me from every market-place in the worldwhere the truffle proclaims his faithful service. 

But the pancake is a pancake, nothing more. It is without inherent orartificial glamour; and this unfortunately, when you come right downto it, is true of food in general. For food, after all, is one of thelesser considerations; the connoisseur, the gourmet, even thegourmand, spends no more than four hours out of the day at his table. From the cycle, he may select four in which to eat; but whether hewill or not, he must set aside seven of the twenty-four in which tosleep. 

Sleeping, then, as opposed to eating, is of almost double importance, since it consumes nearly twice as much time--and time, in itself, isthe most valuable thing in the world. Considered from this angle, itseems incredible that we have no connoisseurs of sleep. For we havenone. Therefore it is with some temerity that I declare sleep to beone of the romances of existence, and not by any chance the simplenecessary it is reputed to be. 

However, this romance, in company with whatever is worthy, is not tobe discovered without the proper labor. Life is not all truffles. Neither do they grow in modest back-yards to be picked of mornings bythe maid-of-all-work. A mere bed, notwithstanding its magic camouflageof coverings, of canopy, of disguised pillows, of shining brass orfluted carven posts, is, pancake like, never surrounded by this auraof romance. No, it is hammock sleep which is the sweetest of allslumber. Not in the hideous, dyed affairs of our summer porches, withtheir miserable curved sticks to keep the strands apart, and theirmaddening creaks which grow in length and discord the higher oneswings--but in a hammock woven by Carib Indians. An Indian hammockselected at random will not suffice; it must be a Carib and noneother. For they, themselves, are part and parcel of the romance, since they are not alone a quaint and poetic people, but the directdescendants of those remote Americans who were the first to see thecaravels of Columbus. Indeed, he paid the initial tribute to theirskill, for in the diary of his first voyage he writes, --

"A great many Indians in canoes came to the ship to-day for thepurpose of bartering their cotton, and _hamacas_ or nets in which theysleep. "

It is supposed that this name owes its being to the hamack tree, fromthe bark of which they were woven. However that may be, the modernhammock of these tropical Red Men is so light and so delicate intexture that during the day one may wear it as a sash, while at nightit forms an incomparable couch. 

But one does not drop off to sleep in this before a just and properpreparation. This presents complexities. First, the hammock must beslung with just the right amount of tautness; then, the novice mustmaster the knack of winding himself in his blanket that he may slidegently into his aerial bed and rest at right angles to the tied ends, thus permitting the free side-meshes to curl up naturally over hisfeet and head. This cannot be taught. It is an art; and any art isone-tenth technique, and nine-tenths natural talent. However, it ispossible to acquire a certain virtuosity, which, after all is said, isbut pure mechanical skill as opposed to sheer genius. One might, perhaps, get a hint by watching the living chrysalid of a potentialmoon-moth wriggle back into its cocoon--but little is to be learnedfrom human teaching. However, if, night after night, one observes hisIndians, a certain instinctive knowledge will arise to aid and abethim in his task. Then, after his patient apprenticeship, he may reapas he has sowed. If it is to be disaster, it is as immediate as it isignominious; but if success is to be his portion, then he is destinedto rest, wholly relaxed, upon a couch encushioned and resilient beyondbelief. He finds himself exalted and supreme above all mundanedisturbances, with the treetops and the stars for his canopy, and theearth a shadowy floor far beneath. This gentle aerial support isdistributed throughout hundreds of fine meshes, and the sole contactwith the earth is through twin living boles, pulsing with swiftrunning sap, whose lichened bark and moonlit foliage excel anytapestry of man's devising. 

Perhaps it is atavistic--this desire to rest and swing in a hamaca. For these are not unlike the treetop couches of our arborealancestors, such a one as I have seen an orang-utan weave in a fewminutes in the swaying crotch of a tree. At any rate, the hammock isnot dependent upon four walls, upon rooms and houses, and it partakesaltogether of the wilderness. Its movement is æolian--yielding toevery breath of air. It has even its own weird harmony--for I haveoften heard a low, whistling hum as the air rushed through the cordagemesh. In a sudden tropical gale every taut strand of my hamaca hasseemed a separate, melodious, orchestral note, while I was buffeted toand fro, marking time to some rhythmic and reckless tune of the windplaying fortissimo on the woven strings about me. The climax of thismusical outburst was not without a mild element of danger--sufficientto create that enviable state of mind wherein the sense of securityand the knowledge that a minor catastrophe may perhaps be broughtabout are weighed one against the other. 

Special, unexpected, and interesting minor dangers are also theprovince of the hamaca. Once, in the tropics, a great fruit fell onthe elastic strands and bounced upon my body. There was an ominousswish of the air in the sweeping arc which this missile described, also a goodly shower of leaves; and since the fusillade took place atmidnight, it was, all in all, a somewhat alarming visitation. However, there were no honorable scars to mark its advent; and what is moreimportant, from all my hundreds of hammock nights, I have no othermemory of any actual or threatened danger which was not due to humancarelessness or stupidity. It is true that once, in another continent, by the light of a campfire, I saw the long, liana-like body of aharmless tree-snake wind down from one of my fronded bed-posts and, like a living woof following its shuttle, weave a passing pattern ofemerald through the pale meshes. But this heralded no harm, for thepoisonous reptiles of that region never climb; and so, since I wasworn out by a hard day, I shut my eyes and slept neither better norworse because of the transient confidence of a neighborly serpent. 

As a matter of fact, the wilderness provides but few real perils, andin a hammock one is safely removed from these. One lies in a stratumabove all damp and chill of the ground, beyond the reach of crawlingtick and looping leech; and with an enveloping _mosquitaro_, ormosquito shirt, as the Venezuelans call it, one is fortified even inthe worst haunts of these most disturbing of all pests. 

Once my ring rope slipped and the hammock settled, but not enough towake me up and force me to set it to rights. I was aware thatsomething had gone wrong, but, half asleep, I preferred to leave thematter in the lap of the gods. Later, as a result, I was awakenedseveral times by the patting of tiny paws against my body, as smalljungle-folk, standing on their hind-legs, essayed to solve the mysteryof the swaying, silent, bulging affair directly overhead. I was unlikeany tree or branch or liana which had come their way before; I do notdoubt that they thought me some new kind of ant-nest, since thesestructures are alike only as their purpose in life is identical--forthey express every possible variation in shape, size, color, design, and position. As for their curiosity, I could make no complaint, for, at best, my visitors could not be so inquisitive as I, inasmuch as Ihad crossed one ocean and two continents with no greater object thanto pry into their personal and civic affairs as well as those oftheir neighbors. To say nothing of their environment and othermatters. 

That my rope slipped was the direct result of my own inefficiency. Thehammock protects one from the dangers of the outside world, but likeany man-made structure, it shows evidences of those imperfectionswhich are part and parcel of human nature, and serve, no doubt, tomake it interesting. But one may at least strive for perfection bybeing careful. Therefore tie the ropes of your hammock yourself, orexamine and test the job done for you. The master of hammocks makes aknot the name of which I do not know--I cannot so much as describe it. But I would like to twist it again--two quick turns, a push and apull; then, the greater the strain put upon it, the greater itsresistance. 

This trustworthiness commands respect and admiration, but it is in themorning that one feels the glow of real gratitude; for, in strikingcamp at dawn, one has but to give a single jerk and the rope isstraightened out, without so much as a second's delay. It is thetying, however, which must be well done--this I learned from bitterexperience. 

It was one morning, years ago, but the memory of it is with me still, vivid and painful. One of the party had left her hammock, which wastied securely since she was skilful in such matters, to sit down andrest in another, belonging to a servant. This was slung at one end ofa high, tropical porch, which was without the railing that surroundsthe more pretentious verandahs of civilization, so that the hammockswung free, first over the rough flooring, then a little out over theyard itself. A rope slipped, the faulty knot gave way, and she fellbackward--a seven-foot fall with no support of any kind by which shemight save herself. A broken wrist was the price she had to pay foranother's carelessness--a broken wrist which, in civilization, isperhaps, one of the lesser tragedies; but this was in the very heartof the Guiana wilderness. Many hours from ether and surgical skill, such an accident assumes alarming proportions. Therefore, I repeat mywarning: tie your knots or examine them. 

It is true, that, when all is said and done, a dweller in hammocks maybring upon himself any number of diverse dangers of a character neverdescribed in books or imagined in fiction. A fellow naturalist ofmine never lost an opportunity to set innumerable traps for the lesserjungle-folk, such as mice and opossums, all of which he religiouslymeasured and skinned, so that each, in its death, should add its miteto human knowledge. As a fisherman runs out set lines, so would heplace his traps in a circle under his hammock, using a cord to tieeach and every one to the meshes. This done, it was his custom to lieat ease and wait for the click below which would usher in a newspecimen, --perhaps a new species, --to be lifted up, removed, andsafely cached until morning. This strategic method served a doublepurpose: it conserved natural energy, and it protected the catch. Forif the traps were set in the jungle and trustfully confided to itscare until the break of day, the ants would leave a beautifullycleaned skeleton, intact, all unnecessarily entrapped. 

Now it happened that once, when he had set his nocturnal traps, hestraightway went to sleep in the midst of all the small jungle people whowere calling for mates and new life, so that he did not hear the clickwhich was to warn him that another little beast of fur had come unawaresupon his death. But he heard, suddenly, a disturbance in the low fernsbeneath his hammock. He reached over and caught hold of one of the cords, finding the attendant trap heavy with prey. He was on the point of feelinghis way to the trap itself, when instead, by some subconscious prompting, he reached over and snapped on his flashlight. And there before him, hanging in mid-air, striking viciously at his fingers which were justbeyond its reach, was a young fer-de-lance--one of the deadliest oftropical serpents. His nerves gave way, and with a crash the trap fell tothe ground where he could hear it stirring and thrashing about among thedead leaves. This ominous rustling did not encourage sleep; he lay therefor a long time listening, --and every minute is longer in thedarkness, --while his hammock quivered and trembled with the reaction. 

Guided by this, I might enter into a new field of naturalizing and sayto those who might, in excitement, be tempted to do otherwise, "Lookat your traps before lifting them. " But my audience would be toolimited; I will refrain from so doing. 

It is true that this brief experience might be looked upon as oneillustration of the perils of the wilderness, since it is notcustomary for the fer-de-lance to frequent the city and the town. Butthis would give rise to a footless argument, leading nowhere. Fordanger is everywhere--it lurks in every shadow and is hidden in thebright sunlight, it is the uninvited guest, the invisible pedestrianwho walks beside you in the crowded street ceaselessly, withouttiring. But even a fer-de-lance should rather add to the number ofhammock devotees than diminish them; for the three feet or more ofelevation is as good as so many miles between the two of you. Andthree miles from any serpent is sufficient. 

It may be that the very word danger is subjected to a differentinterpretation in each one of our mental dictionaries. It is elastic, comprehensive. To some it may include whatever is terrible, terrifying; to others it may symbolize a worthy antagonist, one whothrows down the gauntlet and asks no questions, but who will make agood and fair fight wherein advantage is neither taken nor given. Isuppose, to be bitten by vampires would be thought a danger by manywho have not graduated from the mattress of civilization to thiscubiculum of the wilderness. This is due, in part, to an ignorance, which is to be condoned; and this ignorance, in turn, is due to thatlack of desire for a knowledge of new countries and new experiences, which lack is to be deplored and openly mourned. Many years ago, inMexico, when I first entered the vampire zone, I was apprised of thefact by the clotted blood on my horse's neck in the early morning. Inactually seeing this evidence, I experienced the diverse emotions ofthe discoverer, although as a matter of fact I had discovered nothingmore than the verification of a scientific commonplace. It so happenedthat I had read, at one time, many conflicting statements of theworkings of this aerial leech; therefore, finding myself in his nativehabitat, I went to all sorts of trouble to become a victim to hissorceries. The great toe is the favorite and stereotyped point ofattack, we are told; so, in my hammock, my great toes wereconscientiously exposed night after night, but not until a decadelater was my curiosity satisfied. 

I presume that this was a matter of ill luck, rather than a personalmatter between the vampire and me. Therefore, as a direct result ofthis and like experiences, I have learned to make proper allowancesfor the whims of the Fates. I have learned that it is their pleasureto deluge me with rainstorms at unpropitious moments, also to send me, with my hammock, to eminently desirable countries, which, however, arebarren of trees and scourged of every respectable shrub. That theshowers may not find me unprepared, I pack with my hamaca an extralength of rope, to be stretched taut from foot-post to head-post, thata tarpaulin or canvas may be slung over it. When a treeless country ispresented to me in prospect, I have two stout stakes prepared, and Ido not move forward without them. 

It is a wonderful thing to see an experienced hammocker take hisstakes, first one, then the other, and plunge them into the groundthree or four times, measuring at one glance the exact distance andangle, and securing magically that mysterious "give" so essential towell-being and comfort. Any one can sink them like fence-posts, sothat they stand deep and rigid, a reproach and an accusation; but itrequires a particular skill to judge by the pull whether or not theywill hold through the night and at the same time yield with gentle andsupple swing to the least movement of the sleeper. A Carib knows, instantly, worthy and unworthy ground. I have seen an Indian sink hishamaca posts into sand with one swift, concentrated motion, mathematical in its precision and surety, so that he might enter atonce into a peaceful night of tranquil and unbroken slumber, while I, a tenderfoot then, must needs beat my stakes down into the ground withtremendous energy, only to come to earth with a resounding thwack themoment I mounted my couch. 

The Red Man made his comment, smiling: "Yellow earth, much squeeze. "Which, being translated, informed me that the clayey ground I hadchosen, hard though it seemed, was more like putty in that it wouldslip and slip with the prolonged pressure until the post fell inwardand catastrophe crowned my endeavor. 

So it follows that the hammock, in company with an adequate tarpaulinand two trustworthy stakes, will survive the heaviest downpour as wellas the most arid and uncompromising desert. But since it is man-made, with finite limitations, nature is not without means to defeat itspurpose. The hammock cannot cope with the cold--real cold, that is, not the sudden chill of tropical night which a blanket resists, butthe cold of the north or of high altitudes. This is the realm of thesleeping-bag, the joy of which is another story. More than once I havehad to use a hammock at high levels, since there was nothing else athand; and the numbness of the Arctic was mine. Every mesh seemed toinvite a separate draught. The winds of heaven--all four--playedunceasingly upon me, and I became in due time a swaying mummy of ice. It was my delusion that I was a dead Indian cached aloft upon myarboreal bier--which is not a normal state of mind for the sleepingexplorer. 

Anything rather than this helpless surrender to the elements. Betterthe lowlands and that fantastic shroud, the mosquitaro. For even towind one's self into this is an experience of note. It is ingenious, and called the mosquito shirt because of its general shape, which isas much like a shirt as anything else. A large round center covers thehammock, and two sleeves extend up the supporting strands and inclosethe ends, being tied to the ring-ropes. If at sundown swarms ofmosquitoes become unbearable, one retires into his netting funnel, andthere disrobes. Clothes are rolled into a bundle and tied to thehammock, that one may close one's eyes reasonably confident that thesupply will not be diminished by some small marauder. It is then thata miracle is enacted. For one is at last enabled, under thesepropitious circumstances, to achieve the impossible, to control andmanipulate the void and the invisible, to obey that unforgotten adviceof one's youth, "Oh, g'wan--crawl into a hole and pull the hole inafter you!" At an early age, this unnatural advice held my mind, sothat I devised innumerable means of verifying it; I was filled with adespair and longing whenever I met it anew. But it was an ambitionappeased only in maturity. And this is the miracle of the tropics:climb up into the hamaca, and, at this altitude, draw in the hole ofthe mosquitaro funnel, making it fast with a single knot. It is done. One is at rest, and lying back, listens to the humming of all themosquitoes in the world, to be lulled to sleep by the sad, minorsinging of their myriad wings. But though I have slung my hammock inmany lands, on all the continents, I have few memories of nettingnights. Usually, both in tropics and in tempered climes, one mayboldly lie with face uncovered to the night. 

And this brings us to the greatest joy of hammock life, admission tothe secrets of the wilderness, initiation to new intimacies andsubtleties of this kingdom, at once welcomed and delicately ignoredas any honored guest should be. For this one must make unwonteddemands upon one's nocturnal senses. From habit, perhaps, it isnatural to lie with the eyes wide open, but with all the facultiesconcentrated on the two senses which bring impressions from the worldof darkness--hearing and smell. In a jungle hut a loud cry from out ofthe black treetops now and then reaches the ear; in a tent the faintnoises of the night outside are borne on the wind, and at times thesilhouette of a passing animal moves slowly across the heavy cloth;but in a hamaca one is not thus set apart to be baffled by hiddenmysteries--one is given the very point of view of the creatures wholive and die in the open. 

Through the meshes which press gently against one's face comes everysound which our human ears can distinguish and set apart from thesilence--a silence which in itself is only a mirage of apparentsoundlessness, a testimonial to the imperfection of our senses. Themoaning and whining of some distant beast of prey is brought on thebreeze to mingle with the silken swishing of the palm fronds overheadand the insistent chirping of many insects--a chirping so fine andshrill that it verges upon the very limits of our hearing. And these, combined, unified, are no more than the ground surge beneath thecountless waves of sound. For the voice of the jungle is the voice oflove, of hatred, of hope, of despair--and in the night-time, when thedominance of sense-activity shifts from eye to ear, from retina tonostril, it cries aloud its confidences to all the world. But thehuman mind is not equal to a true understanding of these; for in atropical jungle the birds and the frogs, the beasts and the insectsare sending out their messages so swiftly one upon the other, that thesenses fail of their mission and only chaos and a great confusion arecarried to the brain. The whirring of invisible wings and the movementof the wind in the low branches become one and the same: it is anepic, told in some strange tongue, an epic filled to overflowing withtragedy, with poetry and mystery. The cloth of this drama is wovenfrom many-colored threads, for Nature is lavish with her pigment, reckless with life and death. She is generous because there is no needfor her to be miserly. And in the darkness, I have heard the workingof her will, translating as best I could. 

In the darkness, I have at times heard the tramping of many feet; ina land traversed only by Indian trails I have listened to anoverloaded freight train toiling up a steep grade; I have heard thenoise of distant battle and the cries of the victor and thevanquished. Hard by, among the trees, I have heard a woman seized, have heard her crying, pleading for mercy, have heard her choking andsobbing till the end came in a terrible, gasping sigh; and then, inthe sudden silence, there was a movement and thrashing about in thetopmost branches, and the flutter and whirr of great wings movingswiftly away from me into the heart of the jungle--the only clue tothe author of this vocal tragedy. Once, a Pan of the woods tuned uphis pipes--striking a false note now and then, as if it were his whimto appear no more than the veriest amateur; then suddenly, with thefull liquid sweetness of his reeds, bursting into a strain sowonderful, so silvery clear, that I lay with mouth open to still thebeating of blood in my ears, hardly breathing, that I might catchevery vibration of his song. When the last note died away, there wasutter stillness about me for an instant--nothing stirred, nothingmoved; the wind seemed to have forsaken the leaves. From a greatdistance, as if he were going deeper into the woods, I heard him oncemore tuning up his pipes; but he did not play again. 

Beside me, I heard the low voice of one of my natives murmuring, "_Muerte ha pasado_. " My mind took up this phrase, repeating it, giving it the rhythm of Pan's song--a rhythm delicate, sustained, fullof color and meaning in itself. I was ashamed that one of my kindcould translate such sweet and poignant music into a superstition, could believe that it was the song of death, --the death thatpasses, --and not the voice of life. But it may have been that he waswiser in such matters than I; superstitions are many times no morethan truth in masquerade. For I could call it by no name--whether birdor beast, creature of fur or feather or scale. And not for one, butfor a thousand creatures within my hearing, any obscure nocturnalsound may have heralded the end of life. Song and death may go hand inhand, and such a song may be a beautiful one, unsung, unuttered untilthis moment when Nature demands the final payment for what she hasgiven so lavishly. In the open, the dominant note is the call to amate, and with it, that there may be color and form and contrast, there is that note of pure vocal exuberance which is beauty for beautyand for nothing else; but in this harmony there is sometimes the cryof a creature who has come upon death unawares, a creature who hasperhaps been dumb all the days of his life, only to cry aloud thisonce for pity, for mercy, or for faith, in this hour of his extremity. Of all, the most terrible is the death-scream of a horse, --a cry offrightful timbre, --treasured, according to some secret law, until thisdire instant when for him death indeed passes. 

It was years ago that I heard the pipes of Pan; but one does notforget these mysteries of the jungle night: the sounds and scents andthe dim, glimpsed ghosts which flit through the darkness and thedeepest shadow mark a place for themselves in one's memory, which isnot erased. I have lain in my hammock looking at a tapestry of greendraped over a half-fallen tree, and then for a few minutes have turnedto watch the bats flicker across a bit of sky visible through the darkbranches. When I looked back again at the tapestry, although the duskhad only a moment before settled into the deeper blue of twilight, ascore of great lustrous stars were shining there, making new patternsin the green drapery; for in this short time, the spectral blooms ofthe night had awakened and flooded my resting-place with theirfragrance. 

And these were but the first of the flowers; for when the brief tropictwilight is quenched, a new world is born. The leaves and blossoms ofthe day are at rest, and the birds and insects sleep. New blooms open, strange scents pour forth. Even our dull senses respond to these; forjust as the eye is dimmed, so are the other senses quickened in thesudden night of the jungle. Nearby, so close that one can reach outand touch them, the pale Cereus moons expand, exhaling theirsweetness, subtle breaths of fragrance calling for the very life oftheir race to the whirring hawkmoths. The tiny miller who, through thehours of glare has crouched beneath a leaf, flutters upward, and thetrail of her perfume summons her mate perhaps half a mile down wind. The civet cat, stimulated by love or war, fills the glade with an odorso pungent that it seems as if the other senses must mark it. 

Although there may seem not a breath of air in motion, yet the tide ofscent is never still. One's moistened finger may reveal no cool side, since there is not the vestige of a breeze; but faint odors arrive, become stronger, and die away, or are wholly dissipated by an onrushof others, so musky or so sweet that one can almost taste them. Thesehave their secret purposes, since Nature is not wasteful. If shecreates beautiful things, it is to serve some ultimate end; it is herwhim to walk in obscure paths, but her goal is fixed and immutable. However, her designs are hidden and not easy to decipher; at best, oneachieves, not knowledge, but a few isolated facts. 

Sport in a hammock might, by the casual thinker, be considered aslimited to dreams of the hunt and chase. Yet I have found at mydisposal a score of amusements. When the dusk has just settled down, and the little bats fill every glade in the forest, a box of beetlesor grasshoppers--or even bits of chopped meat--offers the possibilityof a new and neglected sport, in effect the inversion of baiting aschool of fish. Toss a grasshopper into the air and he has only timeto spread his wings for a parachute to earth, when a bat swoops pastso quickly that the eyes refuse to see any single effort--but thegrasshopper has vanished. As for the piece of meat, it is drawn likea magnet to the fierce little face. Once I tried the experiment of abit of blunted bent wire on a long piece of thread, and at the veryfirst cast I entangled a flutter-mouse and pulled him in. I was aghastwhen I saw what I had captured. A body hardly as large as that of amouse was topped with the head of a fiend incarnate. Between his redpuffed lips his teeth showed needle-sharp and ivory-white; his eyeswere as evil as a caricature from _Simplicissimus_, and set deep inhis head, while his ears and nose were monstrous with fold upon foldof skinny flaps. It was not a living face, but a mask of frightfulmobility. 

I set him free, deeming anything so ugly well worthy of life, if suchcould find sustenance among his fellows and win a mate for himselfsomewhere in this world. But he, for all his hideousness and unseemlymien, is not the vampire; the blood-sucking bat has won a mantle ofdeceit from the hands of Nature--a garb that gives him a modest andnot unpleasing appearance, and makes it a difficult matter todistinguish him from his guileless confrères of our summer evenings. 

But in the tropics, --the native land of the hammock, --not only themysteries of the night, but the affairs of the day may be legitimatelyinvestigated from this aerial point of view. It is a fetish of beliefin hot countries that every unacclimatized white man must, sooner orlater, succumb to that sacred custom, the siesta. In the cool of theday he may work vigorously, but this hour of rest is indispensable. Toa healthful person, living a reasonable life, the siesta is sheerluxury. However, in camp, when the sun nears the zenith and the hushwhich settles over the jungle proclaims that most of the wildcreatures are resting, one may swing one's hammock in the very heartof this primitive forest and straightway be admitted into a newprovince, where rare and unsuspected experiences are open to thewayfarer. This is not the province of sleep or dreams, where allthings are possible and preëminently reasonable; for one does not gothrough sundry hardships and all manner of self-denial, only to beblindfolded on the very threshold of his ambition. No naturalist of atemperament which begrudges every unused hour will, for a moment, think of sleep under such conditions. It is not true that the rest andquiet are necessary to cool the Northern blood for active work in theafternoon, but the eye and the brain can combine relaxation withkeenest attention. 

In the northlands the difference in the temperature of the early dawnand high noon is so slight that the effect on birds and othercreatures, as well as plants of all kinds, is not profound. But in thetropics a change takes place which is as pronounced as that broughtabout by day and night. Above all, the volume of sound becomes no morethan a pianissimo melody; for the chorus of birds and insects diesaway little by little with the increase of heat. There is somethinggeometrical about this, something precise and fine in this working ofa natural law--a law from which no living being is immune, for atlength one unconsciously lies motionless, overcome by the warmth andthis illusion of silence. 

The swaying of the hammock sets in motion a cool breeze, and lying atfull length, one is admitted at high noon to a new domain which has noother portal but this. At this hour, the jungle shows few evidences oflife, not a chirp of bird or song of insect, and no rustling of leavesin the heat which has descended so surely and so inevitably. But fromhidden places and cool shadows come broken sounds and whisperings, which cover the gamut from insects to mammals and unite to make adrowsy and contented murmuring--a musical undertone of amity andgoodwill. For pursuit and killing are at the lowest ebb, the stiflingheat being the flag of truce in the world-wide struggle for life andfood and mate--a struggle which halts for naught else, day or night. 

Lying quietly, the confidence of every unconventional and adventurouswanderer will include your couch, since courage is a natural virtue whenthe spirit of friendliness is abroad in the land. I felt that I hadacquired merit that eventful day when a pair of hummingbirds--thimblefulsof fluff with flaming breastplates and caps of gold--looked upon me withsuch favor that they made the strands of my hamaca their boudoir. I was notconscious of their designs upon me until I saw them whirring toward me, twobright, swiftly moving atoms, glowing like tiny meteors, humming like avery battalion of bees. They betook themselves to two chosen cords and, close together, settled themselves with no further demands upon existence. A hundred of them could have rested upon the pair of strands; even thedragon-flies which dashed past had a wider spread of wing; but for thesetwo there were a myriad glistening featherlets to be oiled and arranged, two pairs of slender wings to be whipped clean of every speck of dust, twodelicate, sharp bills to be wiped again and again and cleared ofmicroscopic drops of nectar. Then--like the great eagles roosting highoverhead in the clefts of the mountainside--these mites of birds must needstuck their heads beneath their wings for sleep; thus we three rested in theviolent heat. 

On other days, in Borneo, weaver birds have brought dried grasses andwoven them into the fabric of my hammock, making me indeed feel thatmy couch was a part of the wilderness. At times, some of the largerbirds have crept close to my glade, to sleep in the shadows of the lowjungle-growth. But these were, one and all, timid folk, politelyincurious, with evident respect for the rights of the individual. Butonce, some others of a ruder and more barbaric temperament advancedupon me unawares, and found me unprepared for their coming. I wasdozing quietly, glad to escape for an instant the insistent screamingof a cicada which seemed to have gone mad in the heat, when a lowrustling caught my ear--a sound of moving leaves without wind; thevoice of a breeze in the midst of breathless heat. There was in itsomething sinister and foreboding. I leaned over the edge of myhammock, and saw coming toward me, in a broad, irregular front, agreat army of ants, battalion after battalion of them flowing like asea of living motes over twigs and leaves and stems. I knew the dangerand I half sat up, prepared to roll out and walk to one side. Then Igaged my supporting strands; tested them until they vibrated andhummed, and lay back, watching, to see what would come about. I knewthat no creature in the world could stay in the path of this horde andlive. To kill an insect or a great bird would require only a fewminutes, and the death of a jaguar or a tapir would mean only a fewmore. Against this attack, claws, teeth, poison-fangs would be idleweapons. 

In the van fled a cloud of terrified insects--those gifted with flightto wing their way far off, while the humbler ones went runningheadlong, their legs, four, six, or a hundred, making the swiftestpace vouchsafed them. There were foolish folk who climbed up lowferns, achieving the swaying, topmost fronds only to be trailed by thesavage ants and brought down to instant death. 

Even the winged ones were not immune, for if they hesitated a second, an ant would seize upon them, and, although carried into the air, would not loosen his grip, but cling to them, obstruct their flight, and perhaps bring them to earth in the heart of the jungle, where, cutoff from their kind, the single combat would be waged to the death. From where I watched, I saw massacres innumerable; terrible battles inwhich some creature--a giant beside an ant--fought for his life, crushing to death scores of the enemy before giving up. 

They were a merciless army and their number was countless, with hostupon host following close on each other's heels. A horde of warriorsfound a bird in my game-bag, and left of it hardly a feather. Iwondered whether they would discover me, and they did, though I thinkit was more by accident than by intention. Nevertheless a half-dozenants appeared on the foot-strands, nervously twiddling their antennæin my direction. Their appraisal was brief; with no more than asecond's delay they started toward me. I waited until they were wellon their way, then vigorously twanged the cords under them harpwise, sending all the scouts into mid-air and headlong down among theirfellows. So far as I know, this was a revolutionary maneuver inmilitary tactics, comparable only to the explosion of a set mine. Buteven so, when the last of this brigade had gone on their menacing, pitiless way, and the danger had passed to a new province, I could nothelp thinking of the certain, inexorable fate of a man who, unable tomove from his hammock or to make any defense, should be thus exposedto their attack. There could be no help for him if but one of thisgreat host should scent him out and carry the word back to the rankand file. 

It was after this army had been lost in the black shadows of theforest floor, that I remembered those others who had come withthem--those attendant birds of prey who profit by the evil work ofthis legion. For, hovering over them, sometimes a little in advance, there had been a flying squadron of antbirds and others which had cometo feed, not on the ants, but on the insects which had beenfrightened into flight. At one time, three of these dropped down toperch on my hammock, nervous, watchful, and alert, waiting but amoment before darting after some ill-fated moth or grasshopper which, in its great panic, had escaped one danger only to fall an easy victimto another. For a little while, the twittering and chirping of thesecamp-followers, these feathered profiteers, was brought back to me onthe wind; and when it had died away, I took up my work again in aglade in which no voice of insect reached my ears. The hunting antshad done their work thoroughly. 

And so it comes about that by day or by night the hammock carries withit its own reward to those who have learned but one thing--that thereis a chasm between pancakes and truffles. It is an open door to a newland which does not fail of its promise, a land in which the prosaic, the ordinary, the everyday have no place, since they have beenshouldered out, dethroned, by a new and competent perspective. The godof hammocks is unfailingly kind, just, and generous to those who havefound pancakes wanting and have discovered by inspiration, orwhat-not, that truffles do not grow in back-yards to be served atearly breakfast by the maid-of-all-work. Which proves, I believe, thata mere bed may be a block in the path of philosophy, a commonplace, and that truffles and hammocks--hammocks unquestionably--are twindoors to the land of romance. 

The swayer in hammocks may find amusement and may enrich science byhis record of observations; his memory will be more vivid, his castethe worthier, for the intimacy with wild things achieved when swingingbetween earth and sky, unfettered by mattress or roof. 

X

A TROPIC GARDEN

Take an automobile and into it pile a superman, a great evolutionist, an artist, an ornithologist, a poet, a botanist, a photographer, amusician, an author, adorable youngsters of fifteen, and a tiredbusiness man, and within half an hour I shall have drawn from themsuperlatives of appreciation, each after his own method of emotionalexpression--whether a flood of exclamations, or silence. This is nolight boast, for at one time or another, I have done all this, but inonly one place--the Botanical Gardens of Georgetown, British Guiana. As I hold it sacrilege to think of dying without again seeing the TajMahal, or the Hills from Darjeeling, so something of ethics seemsinvolved in my soul's necessity of again watching the homing of theherons in these tropic gardens at evening. 

In the busy, unlovely streets of the waterfront of Georgetown, one isoften jostled; in the markets, it is often difficult at times to makeone's way; but in the gardens a solitary laborer grubs among theroots, a coolie woman swings by with a bundle of grass on her head, or, in the late afternoon, an occasional motor whirrs past. Mankindseems almost an interloper, rather than architect and owner of thesewonder-gardens. His presence is due far more often to business, histransit marked by speed, than the slow walking or loitering which realappreciation demands. 

A guide-book will doubtless give the exact acreage, tell the mileageof excellent roads, record the date of establishment, and the numberof species of palms and orchids. But it will have nothing to say ofthe marvels of the slow decay of a Victoria Regia leaf, or of thespiral descent of a white egret, or of the feelings which Rooseveltand I shared one evening, when four manatees rose beneath us. It wasfrom a little curved Japanese bridge, and the next morning we were tostart up-country to my jungle laboratory. There was not a ripple onthe water, but here I chose to stand still and wait. After ten minutesof silence, I put a question and Roosevelt said, "I would willinglystand for two days to catch a good glimpse of a wild manatee. " AndSt. Francis heard, and, one after another, four great backs slowlyheaved up; then an ill-formed head and an impossible mouth, with theunbelievable harelip, and before our eyes the sea-cows snorted andgamboled. 

Again, four years later, I put my whole soul into a prayer formanatees, and again with success. During a few moments' interval of atropical downpour, I stood on the same little bridge with HenryFairfield Osborn. We had only half an hour left in the tropics; thesteamer was on the point of sailing; what, in ten minutes, could beseen of tropical life! I stood helpless, waiting, hoping for anythingwhich might show itself in this magic garden, where to-day the foliagewas glistening malachite and the clouds a great flat bowl of oxidizedsilver. 

The air brightened, and a tree leaning far across the water came intoview. On its under side was a long silhouetted line of one and twentylittle fish-eating bats, tiny spots of fur and skinny web, all so muchalike that they might well have been one bat and twenty shadows. 

A small crocodile broke water into air which for him held no moisture, looked at the bats, then at us, and slipped back into the world ofcrocodiles. A cackle arose, so shrill and sudden, that it seemed tohave been the cause of the shower of drops from the palm-fronds; andthen, on the great leaves of the Regia, which defy simile, weperceived the first feathered folk of this single tropicalglimpse--spur-winged jacanas, whose rich rufus and cool lemon-yellowno dampness could deaden. With them were gallinules and small greenherons, and across the pink mist of lotos blossoms just beyond, threeegrets drew three lines of purest white--and vanished. It was not atall real, this onrush of bird and blossom revealed by the temporaryerasing of the driven lines of gray rain. 

Like a spendthrift in the midst of a winning game, I still watchedeagerly and ungratefully for manatees. Kiskadees splashed rather thanflew through the drenched air, an invisible black witch bubbledsomewhere to herself, and a wren sang three notes and a trill whichdied out in a liquid gurgle. Then came another crocodile, and finallythe manatees. Not only did they rise and splash and roll andindolently flick themselves with their great flippers, but they stoodupright on their tails, like Alice's carpenter's companion, and onefondled its young as a water-mamma should. Then the largest stretchedup as far as any manatee can ever leave the water, and caught andmunched a drooping sprig of bamboo. Watching the great puffing lips, we again thought of walruses; but only a caterpillar could emulatethat sideways mumbling--the strangest mouth of any mammal. But frombehind, the rounded head, the shapely neck, the little baby manateeheld carefully in the curve of a flipper, made legends of mermaidsseem very reasonable; and if I had been an early _voyageur_, I shouldassuredly have had stories to tell of mer-kiddies as well. As wewatched, the young one played about, slowly and deliberately, withoutfrisk or gambol, but determinedly, intently, as if realizing its dutyto an abstract conception of youth and warm-blooded mammalness. 

The earth holds few breathing beings stranger than these manatees. Their life is a slow progression through muddy water from one bed oflilies or reeds to another. Every few minutes, day and night, yearafter year, they come to the surface for a lungful of the air whichthey must have, but in which they cannot live. In place of hands theyhave flippers, which paddle them leisurely along, which also serve tohold the infant manatee, and occasionally to scratch themselves whenleeches irritate. The courtship of sea-cows, the qualities whichappeal most to their dull minds, the way they protect the callowyoungsters from voracious crocodiles, how or where they sleep--of allthis we are ignorant. We belong to the same class, but the linebetween water and air is a no man's land which neither of us can passfor more than a few seconds. 

When their big black hulks heaved slowly upward, it brought to my mindthe huge glistening backs of elephants bathing in Indian streams; andthis resemblance is not wholly fantastic. Not far from the oldestEgyptian ruins, excavations have brought to light ruins millions ofyears more ancient--the fossil bones of great creatures as strange asany that live in the realm of fairyland or fiction. Among them wasrevealed the ancestry of elephants, which was also that of manatees. Far back in geological times the tapir-like Moeritherium, whichwandered through Eocene swamps, had within itself the prophecy of twodiverse lines. One would gain great tusks and a long, mobile trunk andlive its life in distant tropical jungles; and another branch was tosink still deeper into the swamp-water, where its hind-legs wouldweaken and vanish as it touched dry land less and less. And hereto-day we watched a quartette of these manatees, living contentedlives and breeding in the gardens of Georgetown. 

The mist again drifted its skeins around leaf and branch, gray thingsbecame grayer, drops formed in mid-air and slipped slowly throughother slower forming drops, and a moment later rain was fallinggently. We went away, and to our mind's eye the manatees behind thatgray curtain still munch bamboos, the spur-wings stretch theircolorful wings cloudward, and the bubble-eyed crocodiles floatintermittently between two watery zones. 

To say that these are beautiful botanical gardens is like thestatement that sunsets are admirable events. It is better to think ofthem as a setting, focusing about the greatest water-lily in theworld, or, as we have seen, the strangest mammal; or as an exhibit ofroots--roots as varied and as exquisite as a hall of famous sculpture;or as a wilderness of tapestry foliage, in texture from cobweb toburlap; or as a heaven-roofed, sun-furnaced greenhouse of blossoms, from the tiniest of dull-green orchids to the fifty-foot spike oftaliput bloom. With this foundation of vegetation recall that theDemerara coast is a paradise for herons, egrets, bitterns, gallinules, jacanas, and hawks, and think of these trees and foliage, islands andmarsh, as a nesting and roosting focus for hundreds of such birds. Thus, considering the gardens indirectly, one comes gradually to therealization of their wonderful character. 

The Victoria Regia has one thing in common with a volcano--no amountof description or of colored plates prepares one for the plant itself. In analysis we recall its dimensions, colors, and form. Standing by atrench filled with its leaves and flowers, we discard the records ofmemory, and cleansing the senses of pre-impressions, begin anew. Themarvel is for each of us, individually, an exception to evolution; itis a special creation, like all the rainbows seen in one's life--athing to be reverently absorbed by sight, by scent, by touch, absorbedand realized without precedent or limit. Only ultimately do we find itnecessary to adulterate this fine perception with definitive words andphrases, and so attempt to register it for ourselves or others. 

I have seen many wonderful sights from an automobile, --such as myfirst Boche barrage and the tree ferns of Martinique, --but none tocompare with the joys of vision from prehistoric _tikka gharries_, ancient victorias, and aged hacks. It was from the low curves of theseequine rickshaws that I first learned to love Paris and Calcutta andthe water-lilies of Georgetown. One of the first rites which I performupon returning to New York is to go to the Lafayette and, afterdinner, brush aside the taxi men and hail a victoria. The last time Idid this, my driver was so old that two fellow drivers, younger thanhe and yet grandfatherly, assisted him, one holding the horse and theother helping him to his seat. Slowly ascending Fifth Avenue close tothe curb and on through Central Park is like no other experience. Thevehicle is so low and open that all resemblance to bus or taxi islost. Everything is seen from a new angle. One learns incidentallythat there is a guild of cab-drivers--proud, restrained, jealous. Ahundred cars rush by without notice. Suddenly we see the whip broughtup in salute to the dingy green top-hat, and across the avenue weperceive another victoria. And we are thrilled at the discovery, asif we had unearthed a new codex of some ancient ritual. 

And so, initiated by such precedent, I have found it a worthy thing tospend hours in decrepit cabs loitering along side roads in theBotanical Gardens, watching herons and crocodiles, lilies andmanatees, from the rusty leather seats. At first the driver looked atme in astonishment as I photographed or watched or wrote; but later heattended to his horse, whispering strange things into its ears, andfinally deserted me. My writing was punctuated by graceful flourishes, resulting from an occasional lurch of the vehicle as the horse steppedfrom one to another patch of luscious grass. 

Like Fujiyama, the Victoria Regia changes from hour to hour, color-shifted, wind-swung, and the mechanism of the blossoms neverceasing. In northern greenhouses it is nursed by skilled gardeners, kept in indifferent vitality by artificial heat and ventilation, withgaged light and selected water; here it was a rank growth, in itsnatural home, and here we knew of its antiquity from birds whose toeshad been molded through scores of centuries to tread its greatleaves. 

In the cool fragrance of early morning, with the sun low across thewater, the leaves appeared like huge, milky-white platters, with nowand then little dancing silhouettes running over them. In anotherslant of light they seemed atolls scattered thickly through a dark, quiet sea, with new-blown flowers filling the whole air withslow-drifting perfume. Best of all, in late afternoon, the true colorscame to the eye--six-foot circles of smooth emerald, with up-turnedhem of rich wine-color. Each had a tell-tale cable lying along thesurface, a score of leaves radiating from one deep hidden root. 

Up through mud and black trench-water came the leaf, like a tiny fistof wrinkles, and day by day spread and uncurled, looking like theunwieldy paw of a kitten or cub. The keels and ribs covering theunder-side increased in size and strength, and finally the great leafwas ironed out by the warm sun into a mighty sheet of smooth, emeraldchlorophyll. Then, for a time, --no one has ever taken the trouble tofind out how long, --it was at its best, swinging back and forth at itsmoorings with deep upright rim, a notch at one side revealing thealmost invisible seam of the great lobes, and serving, also, asdrainage outlet for excess of rain. 

A young leaf occasionally came to grief by reaching the surface amidseveral large ones floating close together. Such a leaf expanded, asusual, but, like a beached boat, was gradually forced high and dry, hardening into a distorted shape and sinking only with the decay ofthe underlying leaves. 

The deep crimson of the outside of the rim was merely a reflectiontint, and vanished when the sun shone directly through; but the massesof sharp spines were very real, and quite efficient in repellingboarders. The leaf offered safe haven to any creature that could leapor fly to its surface; but its life would be short indeed if thecasual whim of every baby crocodile or flipper of a young manatee metwith no opposition. 

Insects came from water and from air and called the floating leafhome, and, from now on, its surface was one of the most interestingand busy arenas in this tropical landscape. 

In late September I spread my observation chair at the very edge ofone of the dark tarns and watched the life on the leaves. Out at thecenter a fussy jacana was feeding with her two spindly-legged babies, while, still nearer, three scarlet-helmeted gallinules lumbered about, now and then tipping over a silvery and black infant which seemedpuzzled as to which it should call parent. Here was a clear example, not only of the abundance of life in the tropics, but of the keencompetition. The jacana invariably lays four eggs, and the gallinule, at this latitude, six or eight, yet only a fraction of the young hadsurvived even to this tender age. 

As I looked, a small crocodile rose, splashed, and sank, sendingterror among the gallinules, but arousing the spur-wing jacana to ahigh pitch of anger. It left its young and flew directly to thewidening circles and hovered, cackling loudly. These birds have ampleability to cope with the dangers which menace from beneath; but theirfear was from above, and every passing heron, egret, or harmless hawkwas given a quick scrutiny, with an instinctive crouch and half-spreadwings. 

But still the whole scene was peaceful; and as the sun grew warmer, young herons and egrets crawled out of their nests on the island a fewyards away and preened their scanty plumage. Kiskadees splashed anddipped along the margin of the water. Everywhere this species seemsseized with an aquatic fervor, and in localities hundreds of milesapart I have seen them gradually desert their fly-catching for surfacefeeding, or often plunging, kingfisher-like, bodily beneath, to emergewith a small wriggling fish--another certain reflection ofoverpopulation and competition. 

As I sat I heard a rustle behind me, and there, not eight feet away, narrow snout held high, one tiny foot lifted, was that furry fiend, Rikki-tikki. He was too quick for me, and dived into a small clump ofundergrowth and bamboos. But I wanted a specimen of mongoose, and theartist offered to beat one end of the bush. Soon I saw the gray formundulating along, and as the rustling came nearer, he shot forth, moving in great bounds. I waited until he had covered half thedistance to the next clump and rolled him over. Going back to mychair, I found that neither jacana, nor gallinules, nor herons hadbeen disturbed by my shot. 

While the introduction of the mongoose into Guiana was a veryreckless, foolish act, yet he seems to be having a rather hard time ofit, and with islands and lily-pads as havens, and waterways in everydirection, Rikki is reduced chiefly to grasshoppers and such smallgame. He has spread along the entire coast, through the cane-fieldsand around the rice-swamps, and it will not be his fault if he doesnot eventually get a foothold in the jungle itself. 

No month or day or hour fails to bring vital changes--tragedies andcomedies--to the network of life of these tropical gardens; but as wedrive along the broad paths of an afternoon, the quiet vistas showonly waving palms, weaving vultures, and swooping kiskadees, withbursts of color from bougainvillea, flamboyant, and queen of theflowers. At certain times, however, the tide of visible change swelledinto a veritable bore of life, gently and gradually, as quiet watersbecome troubled and then pass into the seething uproar of rapids. Inlate afternoon, when the long shadows of palms stretched theirblue-black bars across the terra-cotta roads, the foliage of the greenbamboo islands was dotted here and there with a scattering of youngherons, white and blue and parti-colored. Idly watching them throughglasses, I saw them sleepily preening their sprouting feathers, makingineffectual attempts at pecking one another, or else hunched insilent heron-dream. They were scarcely more alive than the creeping, hour-hand tendrils about them, mere double-stemmed, fluffy petaledblossoms, no more strange than the nearest vegetable blooms--thecannon-ball mystery, the sand-box puzzle, sinister orchids, and thefalse color-alarms of the white-bracted silver-leaf. Compared withthese, perching herons are right and seemly fruit. 

As I watched them I suddenly stiffened in sympathy, as I saw allvegetable sloth drop away and each bird become a detached individual, plucked by an electric emotion from the appearance of a thing of sapand fiber to a vital being of tingling nerves. I followed their unitedglance, and overhead there vibrated, lightly as a thistledown, thefirst incoming adult heron, swinging in from a day's fishing along thecoast. It went on and vanished among the fronds of a distant island;but the calm had been broken, and through all the stems there ran arestless sense of anticipation, a zeitgeist of prophetic import. Onefelt that memory of past things was dimming, and content with presentcomfort was no longer dominant. It was the future to which both thebaby herons and I were looking, and for them realization came quickly. The sun had sunk still lower, and great clouds had begun to spreadtheir robes and choose their tints for the coming pageant. 

And now the vanguard of the homing host appeared, --black dots againstblue and white and salmon, --thin, gaunt forms with slow-moving wingswhich cut the air through half the sky. The little herons and Iwatched them come--first a single white egret, which spiralled down, just as I had many times seen the first returning Spad eddy downwardto a cluster of great hump-backed hangars; then a trio of tricoloredherons, and six little blues, and after that I lost count. It seemedas if these tiny islands were magnets drawing all the herons in theworld. 

Parrakeets whirl roostwards with machine-like synchronism of flight;geese wheel down in more or less regular formation; but these heronsconcentrated along straight lines, each describing its individualradius from the spot where it caught its last fish or shrimp to itsnest or the particular branch on which it will spend the night. With ahemicircle of sufficient size, one might plot all of the hundreds uponhundreds of these radii, and each would represent a distinct line, ifonly a heron's width apart. 

At the height of the evening's flight there were sometimes fiftyherons in sight at once, beating steadily onward until almostoverhead, when they put on brakes and dropped. Some, as the littleegrets, were rather awkward; while the tricolors were the mostskilful, sometimes nose-diving, with a sudden flattening out just intime to reach out and grasp a branch. Once or twice, when a fitfulbreeze blew at sunset, I had a magnificent exhibition of aeronautics. The birds came upwind slowly, beating their way obliquely butsteadily, long legs stretched out far behind the tail and swingingpendulum-like whenever a shift of ballast was needed. They apparentlydid not realize the unevenness of the wind, for when they backed air, ready to descend, a sudden gust would often undercut them and overthey would go, legs, wings, and neck sprawling in mid-air. After oneor two somersaults or a short, swift dive, they would rightthemselves, feathers on end, and frantically grasp at the first leafor twig within reach. Panting, they looked helplessly around, reorientation coming gradually. 

At each arrival, a hoarse chorus went up from hungry throats, andevery youngster within reach scrambled wildly forward, hopeful of afish course. They received but scant courtesy and usually a viciouspeck tumbled them off the branch. I saw a young bird fall to thewater, and this mishap was from no attack, but due to his trippingover his own feet, the claws of one foot gripping those of the otherin an insane clasp, which overbalanced him. He fell through a thinscreen of vines and splashed half onto a small Regia leaf. With neckand wings he struggled to pull himself up, and had almost succeededwhen heron and leaf sank slowly, and only the bare stem swung upagain. A few bubbles led off in a silvery path toward deeper water, showing where a crocodile swam slowly off with his prey. 

For a time the birds remained still, and then crept within thetangles, to their mates or nests, or quieted the clamor of the youngwith warm-storage fish. How each one knew its own offspring was beyondmy ken, but on three separate evenings scattered through one week, Iobserved an individual, marked by a wing-gap of two lost feathers, come, within a quarter-hour of six o'clock, and feed a great awkwardyoungster which had lost a single feather from each wing. So therewas no hit-or-miss method--no luck in the strongest birds taking tollfrom more than two of the returning parents. 

Observing this vesper migration in different places, I began to seeorderly segregation on a large scale. All the smaller herons dwelttogether on certain islands in more or less social tolerance; and onadjoining trees, separated by only a few yards, scores of hawksconcentrated and roosted, content with their snail diet, and whollyignoring their neighbors. On the other side of the gardens, inaristocratic isolation, was a colony of stately American egrets, dainty and graceful. Their circumference of radiation was almost orquite a circle, for they preferred the ricefields for their dailyhunting. Here the great birds, snowy white, with flowing aigrettes, and long, curving necks, settled with dignity, and here they slept andsat on their rough nests of sticks. 

When the height of homing flight of the host of herons had passed, Inoticed a new element of restlessness, and here and there among thefoliage appeared dull-brown figures. There occurred the comicexplanation of white herons who had crept deep among the branches, again emerging in house coat of drab! These were not the same, however, and the first glance through binoculars showed the thick-set, humped figures and huge, staring eyes of night herons. 

As the last rays of the sun left the summit of the royal palms, something like the shadow of a heron flashed out and away, and thenthe import of these facts was impressed upon me. The egret, the nightheron, the vampire--here were three types of organisms, characterizingthe actions and reactions in nature. The islands were receiving andgiving up. Their heart was becoming filled with the many day-feedingbirds, and now the night-shift was leaving, and the very branch onwhich a night heron might have been dozing all day was now occupied, perhaps, by a sleeping egret. With eyes enlarged to gather togetherthe scanty rays of light, the night herons were slipping away in thepath of the vampires--both nocturnal, but unlike in all other ways. And I wondered if, in the very early morning, infant night heronswould greet their returning parents; and if their callow young everfell into the dark waters, what awful deathly alternates would nightreveal; or were the slow-living crocodiles sleepless, with cruel eyeswhich never closed so soundly but that the splash of a young nightheron brought instant response?

XI

THE BAY OF BUTTERFLIES

Butterflies doing strange things in very beautiful ways were in mymind when I sat down, but by the time my pen was uncapped my thoughtshad shifted to rocks. The ink was refractory and a vigorous flick senta shower of green drops over the sand on which I was sitting, and as Iwatched the ink settle into the absorbent quartz--the inversions ofour grandmothers' blotters--I thought of what jolly things the lostink might have been made to say about butterflies and rocks, if itcould have flowed out slowly in curves and angles and dots overpaper--for the things we might have done are always so much moreworthy than those which we actually accomplish. When at last I beganto write, a song came to my ears and my mind again looped backward. Atleast, there came from the very deeps of the water beyond themangroves a low, metallic murmur; and my Stormouth says that inIcelandic _sangra_ means to murmur. So what is a murmur in Icelandmay very well be a song in Guiana. At any rate, my pen would have todo only with words of singing catfish; yet from butterflies to rock, to fish, all was logical looping--mental giant-swings which came asrelaxation after hours of observation of unrelated sheer facts. 

The singing cats, so my pen consented to write, had serenaded me whileI crossed the Cuyuni in a canoe. There arose deep, liquid, vibratingsounds, such as those I now heard, deep and penetrating, as if fromsome submarine gong--a gong which could not be thought of as wet, forit had never been dry. As I stopped paddling the sound became absolutevibration, the canoe itself seemed to tremble, the paddle tingled inmy hands. It was wholly detached; it came from whatever direction theear sought it. Then, without dying out, it was reinforced by anothersound, rhythmical, abrupt, twanging, filling the water and air with aslow measure on four notes. The water swirled beside the canoe, and aface appeared--a monstrous, complacent face, such as Böcklin wouldlove--a face inhuman in possessing the quality of supreme contentment. Framed in the brown waters, the head of the great, grinning catfishrose, and slowly sank, leaving outlines discernible in ripples andbubbles with almost Cheshire persistency. One of my Indians, passingin his dugout, smiled at my peering down after the fish, and murmured, "Boom-boom. "

Then came a day when one of these huge, amiable, living smilesblundered into our net, a smile a foot wide and six feet long, andeven as he lay quietly awaiting what fate brought to great catfish, hesang, both theme and accompaniment. His whole being throbbed with thecontinuous deep drumming as the thin, silky walls of his swim-bladdervibrated in the depths of his body. The oxygen in the air was slowlykilling him, and yet his swan song was possible because of an inneratmosphere so rich in this gas that it would be unbreathable by acreature of the land. Nerve and muscle, special expanse of circlingbones, swim-bladder and its tenuous gas--all these combined to producethe aquatic harmony. But as if to load this contented being withlargesse of apparently useless abilities, the two widespreading finspines--the fins which correspond to our arms--were swiveled inrough-ridged cups at what might have been shoulders, and when movedback and forth the stridulation troubled all the water, and the air, too, with the muffled, twanging, _rip_, _rip_, _rip_, _rip_. The twospines were tuned separately, the right being a full tone lower, andthe backward drawing of the bow gave a higher note than its forwardreach. So, alternately, at a full second tempo, the four tones roseand fell, carrying out some strange Silurian theme: a muffled cadenceof undertones, which, thrilled with the mystery of their author andcause, yet merged smoothly with the cosmic orchestra of wind andripples and distant rain. 

So the great, smooth, arching lift of granite rocks at our bungalow'sshore, where the giant catfish sang, was ever afterward Boom-boomPoint. And now I sat close by on the sand and strove to think anew ofmy butterflies, for they were the reason of my being there thatbrilliant October afternoon. But still my pen refused, hovering aboutthe thing of ultimate interest as one leaves the most desired book tothe last. For again the ear claimed dominance, and I listened to a newlittle refrain over my shoulder. I pictured a tiny sawhorse, and amidget who labored with might and main to cut through a never-endingstint of twigs. I chose to keep my image to the last, and did notmove or look around, until there came the slightest of tugs at myknee, and into view clambered one of those beings who are so beautifuland bizarre that one almost thinks they should not be. My secondsinger was a beetle--an awkward, enormous, serious, brilliant beetle, with six-inch antennæ and great wing covers, which combined the huesof the royal robes of Queen Thi, tempered by thousands of years ofsilent darkness in the underground tombs at Sakhara, with the grace ofcurve and angle of equally ancient characters on the hill tombs ofFokien. On a background of olive ochre there blazed great splashes andcharacters of the red of jasper framed in black. Toward the frontNature had tried heavy black stippling, but it clouded the pattern andshe had given it up in order that I might think of Egypt and Cathay. 

But the thing which took the beetle quite out of a world of reasonablethings was his forelegs. They were outrageous, and he seemed to thinkso, too, for they got in his way, and caught in wrong things andpulled him to one side. They were three times the length of his otherlimbs, spreading sideways a full thirteen inches, long, slender, beautifully sculptured, and forever reaching out in front forwhatever long-armed beetles most desire. And his song, as he climbedover me, was squeaky and sawlike, and as he walked he doddered, headtrembling as an old man's shakes in final acquiescence in the futilityof life. 

But in this great-armed beetle it was a nodding of necessity, adoddering of desire, the drawing of the bow across the strings in ahymn of hope which had begun in past time with the first stridulationof ancient insects. To-day the fiddling vibrations, the Song of theBeetle, reached out in all directions. To the majority of jungle earsit was only another note in the day's chorus: I saw it attract aflycatcher's attention, hold it a moment, and then lose it. To me itcame as a vitally interesting tone of deep significance, for whateveremotions it might arouse in casual ears, its goal was anotherGreat-armed Beetle, who might or might not come within its radius. With unquestioning search the fiddler clambered on and on, over me andover flowers and rocks, skirting the ripples and vanishing into amaelstrom of waving grass. Long after the last awkward lurch, therecame back zizzing squeaks of perfect faith, and I hoped, as I passedbeyond the periphery of sound, that instinct and desire might directtheir rolling ball of vibrations toward the one whose ear, whether inantenna, or thorax or femoral tympanum had, through untold numbers ofpast lives, been attuned to its rhythm. 

Two thousand miles north of where I sat, or ten million, five hundredand sixty thousand feet (for, like Bunker Bean's book-keeper, Isometimes like to think of things that way), I would look out of thewindow one morning in days to come, and thrill at the sight of fallingflakes. The emotion would very probably be sentiment--the memory ofwonderful northland snowstorms, of huge fires, of evenings withRoosevelt, when discussions always led to unknowable fields, when bookafter book yielded its phrase or sentence of pure gold thought. On oneof the last of such evenings I found a forgotten joy-of-battle-speechof Huxley's, which stimulated two full days and four booksre-read--while flakes swirled and invisible winds came swiftly aroundthe eaves over the great trophies--_poussant des soupirs_, --we longingwith our whole souls for an hour of talk with that splendid oldfighting scientist. 

These are thoughts which come at first-snow, thoughts humanly narrowand personal compared to the later delights of snow itself--crystalsand tracks, the strangeness of freezing and the mystery of melting. And they recurred now because for days past I had idly watchedscattered flurries of lemon-yellow and of orange butterflies driftpast Kartabo. Down the two great Guiana rivers they came, steadilyprogressing, yet never hurrying; with zigzag flickering flight theybarely cleared the trees and shrubs, and then skimmed the surface, vanishing when ripples caught the light, redoubled by reflection whenthe water lay quiet and polished. For month after month they passed, sometimes absent for days or weeks, but soon to be counted at earliestsunup, always arousing renewed curiosity, always bringing to mind thefirst flurry of winter. 

We watch the autumn passing of birds with regret, but when thebluebirds warble their way southward we are cheered with the hope andthe knowledge that some, at least, will return. Here, vast stretchesof country, perhaps all Guiana, and how much of Brazil and Venezuelano one knows, poured forth a steady stream of yellow and orangebutterflies. They were very beautiful and they danced and flickeredin the sunlight, but this was no temporary shifting to a pleasanterclime or a land of more abundant flowers, but a migration in the grimold sense which Cicero loved, _non dubitat_ . .. _migrare de vita_. Nobutterfly ever turned back, or circled again to the glade, with itsyellow cassia blooms where he had spent his caterpillarhood. Nor didhe fly toward the north star or the sunset, but between the two. Twelve years before, as I passed up the Essequibo and the Cuyuni, Inoticed hundreds of yellow butterflies each true to his little compassvariation of NNW. 

There are times and places in Guiana where emigrating butterflies turnto the north or the south; sometimes for days at a time, but sooner orlater the eddies straighten out, their little flotillas cease tacking, and all swing again NNW. 

To-day the last of the migration stragglers of the year--perhaps thefiftieth great-grandsons of those others--held true to the Catopsilianlodestone. 

My masculine pronouns are intentional, for of all the thousands andtens of thousands of migrants, all, as far as I know, were males. Catch a dozen yellows in a jungle glade and the sexes may be equal. But the irresistible maelstrom impels only the males. Whence they comeor why they go is as utterly unknown to us as why the females areimmune. 

Once, from the deck of a steamer, far off the Guiana coast, I sawhosts of these same great saffron-wings flying well above the water, headed for the open sea. Behind them were sheltering fronds, nectar, soft winds, mates; before were corroding salt, rising waves, loweringclouds, a storm imminent. Their course was NNW, they sailed undersealed orders, their port was Death. 

Looking out over the great expanse of the Mazaruni, the flutteringinsects were usually rather evenly distributed, each with a few yardsof clear space about it, but very rarely--I have seen it only twice--anew force became operative. Not only were the little volant beingssiphoned up in untold numbers from their normal life of sleeping, feeding, dancing about their mates, but they were blindly poured intoan invisible artery, down which they flowed in close association, _véritables corpuscules de papillons_, almost touching, forming abending ribbon, winding its way seaward, with here and there atemporary fraying out of eddying wings. It seemed like a waywardcloud still stained with last night's sunset yellow, which had set outon its own path over rivers and jungles to join the sea mists beyondthe uttermost trees. 

Such a swarm seemed imbued with an ecstasy of travel which surpasseddiscomfort. Deep cloud shadows might settle down, but only dimmed thepainted wings; under raindrops the ribbon sagged, the insects flyingcloser to the water. On the other hand, the scattered hosts of themore ordinary migrations, while they turned neither to the north norto the west, yet fled at the advent of clouds and rain, seekingshelter under the nearest foliage. So much loitering was permitted, but with the coming of the sun again they must desert the pleasantfeel of velvet leaves, the rain-washed odors of streaming blossoms, and set their antennæ unquestioningly upon the strange last turn oftheir wheel of life. 

What crime of ancestors are they expiating? In some forgottencaterpillardom was an act committed, so terrible that it can never beknown, except through the working out of the karma upon millions ofbutterflies? Or does there linger in the innumerable little ganglionminds a memory of long-lost Atlantis, so compelling to masculineCatopsilias that the supreme effort of their lives is an attempt toenvisage it? "Absurd fancies, all, " says our conscious entomologicalsense, and we agree and sweep them aside. And then quite as readily, more reasonable scientific theories fall asunder, and we are left atlast alone with the butterflies, a vast ignorance, and a greatunfulfilled desire to know what it all means. 

On this October day the migration of the year had ceased. To my coarsesenses the sunlight was of equal intensity, the breeze unchanged, thewhole aspect the same--and yet something as intangible as thought, asimpelling as gravitation, had ceased to operate. The tension onceslackened, the butterflies took up their more usual lives. But whatcould I know of the meaning of "normal" in the life of a butterfly--Iwho boasted a miserable single pair of eyes and no greater number oflegs, whose shoulders supported only shoulder blades, and whose youthwas barren of caterpillarian memories!

As I have said, migration was at an end, yet here I had stumbled upona Bay of Butterflies. No matter whether one's interest in life laychiefly with ornithology, teetotalism, arrowheads, politics, botany, or finance, in this bay one's thoughts would be sure to beconcentrated on butterflies. And no less interesting than thebutterflies were their immediate surroundings. The day before, I hadsat close by on a low boulder at the head of the tiny bay, with not abutterfly in sight. It occurred to me that my ancestor, Eryops, wouldhave been perfectly at home, for in front of me were clumps ofstrange, carboniferous rushes, lacking leaves and grace, and sedgessuch as might be fashioned in an attempt to make plants out of greenstraw. Here and there an ancient jointed stem was in blossom, apinnacle of white filaments, and hour after hour there came littlebrown trigonid visitors, sting-less bees, whose nests were veritablemuseums of flower extracts--tubs of honey, hampers of pollen, barrelsof ambrosia, hoarded in castles of wax. Scirpus-sedge or orchid, allwas the same to them. 

All odor evaded me until I had recourse to my usual olfactory crutch, placing the flower in a vial in the sunlight. Delicate indeed was thefragrance which did not yield itself to a few minutes of thisdistillation. As I removed the cork there gently arose the scent ofthyme, and of rose petals long pressed between the leaves of old, oldbooks--a scent memorable of days ancient to us, which in past lives ofsedges would count but a moment. In an instant it passed, drowned inthe following smell of bruised stem. But I had surprised the odor ofthis age-old growth, as evanescent as the faint sound of the breezesifting through the cluster of leafless stalks. I felt certain thatEryops, although living among horserushes and ancient sedges, neversmelled or listened to them, and a glow of satisfaction came over meat the thought that perhaps I represented an advance on this funny oldforebear of mine; but then I thought of the little bees, drawn fromafar by the scent, and I returned to my usual sense of human futility, which is always dominant in the presence of insect activities. 

I leaned back, crowding into a crevice of rock, and strove to realizemore deeply the kinship of these fine earth neighbors. Bone of my boneindeed they were, but their quiet dignity, their calmness in storm andsun, their poise, their disregard of all small, petty things, whetherof mechanics, whether chemical or emotional--these were attributes towhich I could only aspire, being the prerogatives of superiors. 

These rocks, in particular, seemed of the very essence of earth. Threeelements fought over them. The sand and soil from which they liftedtheir splendid heads sifted down, or was washed up, in vain effort tocover them. More subtly dead tree trunks fell upon them, returned toearth, and strove to encloak them. For six hours at a time the waterclaimed them, enveloping them slowly in a mantle of quicksilver, orsurging over with rough waves. Algal spores took hold, desmids anddiatoms swam in and settled down, little fish wandered in and out ofthe crevices, while large ones nosed at the entrances. 

Then Mother Earth turned slowly onward; the moon, reaching down, beckoned with invisible fingers, and the air again entered this noman's land. Breezes whispered where a few moments before ripples hadlapped; with the sun as ally, the last remaining pool vanished andthere began the hours of aerial dominion. The most envied character ofour lesser brethren is their faith. No matter how many hundreds ofthousands of tides had ebbed and flowed, yet to-day every pinch oflife which was blown or walked or fell or flew to the rocks duringtheir brief respite from the waves, accepted the good dry surfacewithout question. 

Seeds and berries fell, and rolled into hollows rich in mulcted earth;parachutes, buoyed on thistle silk, sailed from distant jungle plants;every swirl of breeze brought spores of lichens and moss, and even theretreating water unwittingly aided, having transported hither anddropped a cargo of living things, from tiniest plant to seeds ofmightiest mora. Though in the few allotted hours these might notsprout, but only quicken in their heart, yet blue-winged wasps madetheir faith more manifest, and worked with feverish haste to gatherpellets of clay and fashion cells. I once saw even the beginning ofstorage--a green spider, which an hour later was swallowed by apassing fish instead of nourishing an infant wasp. 

Spiders raised their meshes where shrimps had skipped, and flieshummed and were caught by singing jungle vireos, where armored catfishhad passed an hour or two before. 

So the elements struggled and the creatures of each strove to fulfiltheir destiny, and for a little time the rocks and I wondered at ittogether. 

In this little arena, floored with sand, dotted with rushes andbalconied with boulders, many hundreds of butterflies were gathered. There were five species, all of the genius _Catopsilia_, but onlythree were easily distinguishable in life, the smaller, lemon yellow_statira_, and the larger, orange _argente_ and _philea_. There wasalso _eubele_, the migrant, keeping rather to itself. 

I took some pictures, then crept closer; more pictures and a nearerapproach. Then suddenly all rose, and I felt as if I had shattered awonderful painting. But the sand was a lodestone and drew them down. Islipped within a yard, squatted, and mentally became one of them. Silently, by dozens and scores, they flew around me, and soon theyeclipsed the sand. They were so closely packed that their outstretchedlegs touched. There were two large patches, and a smaller areaoutlined by no boundary that I could detect. Yet when these wereoccupied the last comers alighted on top of the wings of theircomrades, who resented neither the disturbance nor the weight. Twolayers of butterflies crammed into small areas of sand in the midstof more sand, bounded by walls of empty air--this was a strange thing. 

A little later, when I enthusiastically reported it to a professionallepidopterist he brushed it aside. "A common occurrence the worldover, Rhopalocera gathered in damp places to drink. " I, too, hadobserved apparently similar phenomena along icy streams in Sikkim, andaround muddy buffalo-wallows in steaming Malay jungles. And I canrecall many years ago, leaning far out of a New England buggy to watchclouds of little sulphurs flutter up from puddles beneath the creakingwheels. 

The very fact that butterflies chose to drink in company is of intenseinterest, and to be envied as well by us humans who are temporarilydenied that privilege. But in the Bay of Butterflies they were notdrinking, nor during the several days when I watched them. One of thechosen patches of sand was close to the tide when I first saw them, and damp enough to appease the thirst of any butterfly. The other twowere upon sand, parched by hours of direct tropical sun, and here thetwo layers were massed. 

The insects alighted, facing in any direction, but veered at once, heading upbreeze. Along the riverside of markets of tropical cities Ihave seen fleets of fishing boats crowded close together, their gaysails drying, while great ebony Neptunes brought ashore baskets ofangel fish. This came to mind as I watched my flotillas ofbutterflies. 

I leaned forward until my face was hardly a foot from the outliers, and these I learned to know as individuals. One sulphur had lost a bitof hind wing, and three times he flew away and returned to the samespot. Like most cripples, he was unamiable, and resented a closeapproach, pushing at the trespasser with a foreleg in a mostunbutterfly-like way. Although I watched closely, I did not see asingle tongue uncoiled for drinking. Only when a dense group becameuneasy and pushed one another about were the tongue springs slightlyloosened. Even the nervous antennæ were quiet after the insects hadsettled. They seemed to have achieved a Rhopaloceran Nirvana, contentto rest motionless until caught up in the temporary whirlwinds ofrestlessness which now and then possessed them. 

They came from all directions, swirling over the rocks, twistingthrough nearby brambles, and settling without a moment's hesitation. It was as though they had all been here many times before, arendezvous which brooked not an instant's delay. From time to timesome mass spirit troubled them, and, as one butterfly, the wholecompany took to wing. Close as they were when resting, they fairlybuffeted one another in mid-air. Their wings, striking one another andmy camera and face, made a strange little rustling, crisp andcrackling whispers of sounds. As if a pile of Northern autumn leaves, fallen to earth, suddenly remembered days of greenness and hummingbees, and strove to raise themselves again to the bare branchesoverhead. 

Down came the butterflies again, brushing against my clothes and eyesand hands. All that I captured later were males, and most were freshand newly emerged, with a scattering of dimmed wings, frayed at edges, who flew more slowly, with less vigor. Finally the lower patch waswashed out by the rising tide, but not until the water actuallyreached them did the insects leave. I could trace with accuracy theexact reach of the last ripple to roll over the flat sand by thecontour of the remaining outermost rank of insects. 

On and on came the water, and soon I was forced to move, and thehundreds of butterflies in front of me. When the last one had left Iwent away, returning two hours later. It was then that I witnessed themost significant happening in the Bay of Butterflies--one which shookto the bottom the theory of my lepidopterist friend, together with mythoughtless use of the word normal. Over two feet of restless brownwater covered the sand patches and rocked the scouring rushes. A fewfeet farther up the little bay the remaining sand was still exposed. Here were damp sand, sand dotted with rushes, and sand dry and whitein the sun. About a hundred butterflies were in sight, somecontinually leaving, and others arriving. Individuals still dashedinto sight and swooped downward. But not one attempted to alight onthe exposed sand. There was fine, dry sand, warm to a butterfly'sfeet, or wet sand soaked with draughts of good Mazaruni water. Butthey passed this unheeding, and circled and fluttered in two swarms, as low as they dared, close to the surface of the water, exactly overthe two patches of sand which had so drawn and held them or theirbrethren two hours before. Whatever the ultimate satisfaction mayhave been, the attraction was something transcending humidity, aridity, or immediate possibility of attainment. It was a definitecosmic point, a geographical focus, which, to my eyes andunderstanding, was unreasonable, unsuitable, and inexplicable. 

As I watched the restless water and the butterflies striving to find away down through it to the only desired patches of sand in the world, there arose a fine, thin humming, seeping up through the very waves, and I knew the singing catfish were following the tide shoreward. Andas I considered my vast ignorance of what it all meant, of how littleI could ever convey of the significance of the happenings in the Bayof Butterflies, I felt that it would have been far better for all ofmy green ink to have trickled down through the grains of sand. 

XII

SEQUELS

Tropical midges of sorts live less than a day--sequoias have felttheir sap quicken at the warmth of fifteen hundred springs. Somewherebetween these extremes, we open our eyes, look about us for a time andclose them again. Modern political geography and shifts of governmentgive us Methusalistic feelings--but a glance at rocks or stars sendsus shuddering among the other motes which glisten for a moment in thesunlight and then vanish. 

We who strive for a little insight into evolution and the meaning ofthings as they are, forever long for a glimpse of things as they were. Here at my laboratory I wonder what the land was like before the densemat of vegetation came to cover every rock and grain of sand, or howthe rivers looked when first their waters trickled to the sea. 

All our stories are of the middles of things, --without beginning orend; we scientists are plunged suddenly upon a cosmos in the fulluproar of eons of precedent, unable to look ahead, while to lookbackward we must look down. 

Exactly a year ago I spent two hours in a clearing in the jungle backof Kartabo laboratory, and let my eyes and ears have full swing. [2]Now in August of the succeeding year I came again to this clearing, and found it no more a clearing. Indeed so changed was it, that forweeks I had passed close by without a thought of the jungle meadow ofthe previous year, and now, what finally turned me aside from my usualtrail, was a sound. Twelve months ago I wrote, "From the monotone ofunder-world sounds a strange little rasping detached itself, areiterated, subdued scraping or picking. It carried my mind instantlyto the throbbing theme of the Niebelungs, onomatopoetic of the littlehammers forever busy in their underground work. I circled a small bushat my side, and found that the sound came from one of the branchesnear the top; so with my glasses I began a systematic search. " Thiswas as far as I ever got, for a flock of parrakeets exploded close athand and blew the lesser sound out of mind. If I had stopped to guessI would probably have considered the author a longicorn beetle or somefiddling orthopter. 

[Footnote 2: See page 34. ]

Now, a year later, I suddenly stopped twenty yards away, for at theend of the silvery cadence of a woodhewer, I heard the low, measured, toneless rhythm which instantly revived to mind every detail of theclearing. I was headed toward a distant palm frond beneath whose tipwas a nest of Rufous Hermits, for I wished to see the two atoms ofhummingbirds at the moment when they rolled from their _petit pois_egg-shells. I gave this up for the day and turned up the hill, wherefifty feet away was the stump and bush near which I had sat andwatched. Three times I went past the place before I could be certain, and even at the last I identified it only by the relative position ofthe giant tauroneero tree, in which I had shot many cotingas. Thestump was there, a bit lower and more worn at the crevices, leakingsawdust like an overloved doll--but the low shrub had become a tallsapling, the weeds--vervain, boneset, velvet-leaf--all had been toppedand killed off by dense-foliaged bushes and shrubs, which a yearbefore had not raised a leaf above the meadow level. The old vistaswere gone, the landscape had closed in, the wilderness was shuttingdown. Nature herself was "letting in the jungle. " I felt like Rip VanWinkle, or even more alien, as if the passing of time had beenaccelerated and my longed-for leap had been accomplished, beyond theusual ken of mankind's earthly lease of senses. 

All these astounding changes had come to pass through the heat andmoisture of a tropical year, and under deliberate scientificcalculation there was nothing unusual in the alteration. I rememberedthe remarkable growth of one of the laboratory bamboo shoots duringthe rainy season--twelve and a half feet in sixteen days, but that wasa single stem like a blade of grass, whereas here the whole landscapewas altered--new birds, new insects, branches, foliage, flowers, wheretwelve short months past, was open sky above low weeds. 

In the hollow root on the beach, my band of crane-flies had danced fora thousand hours, but here was a sound which had apparently neverceased for more than a year--perhaps five thousand hours of daylight. It was a low, penetrating, abruptly reiterated beat, occurring aboutonce every second and a half, and distinctly audible a hundred feetaway. The "low bush" from which it proceeded last year, was now arespectable sapling, and the source far out of reach overhead. Idiscovered a roundish mass among the leaves, and the first stroke ofthe ax sent the rhythm up to once a second, but did not alter thetimbre. A few blows and the small trunk gave way and I fled for mylife. But there was no angry buzzing and I came close. After acessation of ten or fifteen seconds the sound began again, weaker butsteady. The foliage was alive with small Azteca ants, but these weretenants of several small nests near by, and at the catastrophe overraneverything. 

The largest structure was the smooth carton nest of a wasp, abeautiful species, pale yellowish-red with wine-colored wings. Onlyonce did an individual make an attempt to sting and even when my headwas within six inches, the wasps rested quietly on the broken combs. By careful watching, I observed that many of the insects jerked theabdomen sharply downward, butting the comb or shell of smooth paper aforceful blow, and producing a very distinct noise. I could not atfirst see the mass of wasps which were giving forth the major rhythm, as they were hidden deep in the nest, but the fifty-odd wasps insight kept perfect time, or occasionally an individual skipped one ortwo beats, coming in regularly on every alternate or every third beat. Where they were two or three deep, the uppermost wasps struck theinsects below them with their abdomens in perfect rhythm with the nestbeat. For half an hour the sound continued, then died down and was notheard again. The wasps dispersed during the night and the nest wasdeserted. 

It reminded me of the telegraphing ants which I have often heard inBorneo, a remarkable sweeping roll, caused by the host of insectsstriking the leaves with their heads, and produced only when they aredisturbed. It appeared to be of the nature of a warning signal, givingme opportunity to back away from the stinging legions which filled thethicket against which I pushed. 

The rhythm of these wasps was very different. They were peaceable, noteven resenting the devastation of their home, but always and alwaysmust the inexplicable beat, beat, beat, be kept up, serving somepurpose quite hidden from me. During succeeding months I found twomore nests, with similar fetish of sound vibrations, which led totheir discovery. From one small nest, which fairly shook with thestrength of their beats, I extracted a single wasp and placed him in aglass-topped, metal box. For three minutes he kept up the rhythmicbeat. Then I began a more rapid tattoo on the bottom of the box, andthe changed tempo confused him, so that he stopped at once, and wouldnot tap again. 

A few little Mazaruni daisies survived here and there, blossomingbravely, trying to believe that the shade was lessening, and not dailybecoming more dense. But their leaves were losing heart, and paling inthe scant light. Another six months and dead leaves and moss wouldhave obliterated them, and the zone of brilliant flowers and gorgeousbutterflies and birds would shift many feet into the air, with thetops of the trees as a new level. 

As long as I remained by my stump my visitors were of the jungle. Ayellow-bellied trogon came quite close, and sat as trogons do, verystraight and stiff like a poorly mounted bird, watching passingflycatchers and me and the glimpses of sky. At first he rolled hislittle cuckoo-like notes, and his brown mate swooped up, saw me, shifted a few feet farther off and perched full of curiosity, craningher neck and looking first with one eye, then the other. Now the malebegan a content song. With all possible variations of his few andsimple tones, on a low and very sweet timbre, he belied his unoscineperch in the tree of bird life, and sang to himself. Now and then hewas drowned out by the shrilling of cicadas, but it was a delightfulserenade, and he seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. A few daysbefore, I had made a careful study of the syrinx of this bird, whom wemay call rather euphoniously _Trogonurus curucui_, and had been struckby the simplicity both of muscles and bones. Now, having summoned hismate in regular accents, there followed this unexpected whisper song. It recalled similar melodies sung by pheasants and Himalayanpartridges, usually after they had gone to roost. 

Once the female swooped after an insect, and in the midst of one ofthe sweetest passages of the male trogon, a green grasshopper shiftedhis position. He was only two inches away from the singer, and allthis time had been hidden by his chlorophyll-hued veil. And now thetrogon fairly fell off the branch, seizing the insect almost beforethe tone died away. Swallowing it with considerable difficulty, theharmony was taken up again, a bit throaty for a few notes. Then thepair talked together in the usual trogon fashion, and the suddenshadow of a passing vulture, drew forth discordant cat calls, as bothbirds swooped from sight to avoid the fancied hawk. 

A few minutes later the vocal seal of the jungle was uttered by aquadrille bird. When the notes of this wren are heard, I can neverimagine open, blazing sunshine, or unobstructed blue sky. Like thecall of the wood pewee, the wren's radiates coolness and shadowyquiet. No matter how tropic or breathless the jungle, when theflute-like notes arise they bring a feeling of freshness, they arousea mental breeze, which cools one's thoughts, and, although there maybe no water for miles, yet we can fairly hear the drip of cool dropsfalling from thick moss to pools below. First an octave of two notesof purest silver, then a varying strain of eight or ten notes, sosweet and powerful, so individual and meaningful that it might standfor some wonderful motif in a great opera. I shut my eyes, and I wasdeaf to all other sounds while the wren sang. And as it dwelt on thelast note of its phrase, a cicada took it up on the exact tone, andblended the two final notes into a slow vibration, beginning gentlyand rising with the crescendo of which only an insect, and especiallya cicada, is master. Here was the eternal, hypnotic tom-tom rhythm ofthe East, grafted upon supreme Western opera. For a time my changedclearing became merely a sounding box for the most thrilling of junglesongs. I called the wren as well as I could, and he came nearer andnearer. The music rang out only a few yards away. Then he becamesuspicious, and after that each phrase was prefaced by typical wrenscolding. He could not help but voice his emotions, and the harshnotes told plainly what he thought of my poor imitation. Then anotherfeeling would dominate, and out of the maelstrom of harshness, oftumbled, volcanic vocalization would rise the pure silver stream ofsingle notes. 

The wren slipped away through the masses of fragrant Davilla blossoms, but his songs remained and are with me to this moment. And now Ileaned back, lost my balance, and grasping the old stump for support, loosened a big piece of soft, mealy wood. In the hollow beneath, Isaw a rainbow in the heart of the dead tree. 

This rainbow was caused by a bug, and when we stop to think of it, this shows how little there is in a name. For when we say bug, or forthat matter bogy or bugbear, we are garbling the sound which our very, very forefathers uttered when they saw a specter or hobgoblin. Theysaid it _bugge_ or even _bwg_, but then they were more afraid ofspecters in those days than we, who imprison will-o'-the-wisps in Verylights, and rub fox-fire on our watch faces. At any rate here was abug who seemed to ill-deserve his name, although if the Niblelungscould fashion the Rheingold, why could not a bug conceive a rainbow?

Whenever a human, and especially a house-human thinks of bugs, shethinks unpleasantly and in superlatives. And it chances thatevolution, or natural selection, or life's mechanism, or fate or acreator, has wrought them into form and function also in superlatives. Cicadas are supreme in longevity and noise. One of our northernspecies sucks in silent darkness for seventeen years, and then, for asingle summer, breaks all American long-distance records for insectvoices. To another group, known as Fulgorids, gigantic heads andstreamers of wax have been allotted. Those possessing the formerrejoice in the name of Lantern Flies, but they are at presentunfaithful vestal bugs, though it is extremely doubtful if their wickswere ever trimmed or lighted. To see a big wax bug flying withtrailing ribbons slowly from tree to tree in the jungle is to recallthe streaming trains of a flock of peacocks on the wing. 

The membracids must of all deserve the name of "bugges" for no elf orhobgoblin was ever more bizarre. Their legs and heads and bodies aresmall and aphid-like, but aloft there spring minarets and handles andtowers and thorns and groups of hairy balls, out of all reason andsense. Only Stegosaurus and Triceratops bear comparison. Another groupof five-sided bugs are the skunks and civet-cats among insects, guarding themselves from danger by an aura of obnoxious scent. 

Not the least strange of this assemblage is the author of our rainbowin the stump. My awkwardness had broken into a hollow which opened tothe light on the other side of the rotten bole. A vine had tendriledits way into the crevice where the little weaver of rainbows hadfound board and lodging. We may call him toad-hopper or spittle-bug, or as Fabre says, "_Contentons-nous de Cicadelle, qui respecte letympan. _" Like all of its kindred, the Bubble Bug finds Nirvana in asappy green stem. It has neither strong flight, nor sticky wax, thornyarmature nor gas barrage, so it proceeds to fashion an armor ofbubbles, a cuirass of liquid film. This, in brief, was the rainbowwhich caught my eye when I broke open the stump. Up to that moment norainbow had existed, only a little light sifting through from thevine-clad side. But now a ray of sun shattered itself on the pile ofbubbles, and sprayed itself out into a curved glory. 

Bubble Bugs blow their froth only when immature, and their bodies area distillery or home-brew of sorts. No matter what the color, orviscosity or chemical properties of sap, regardless of whether itflows in liana, shrub, or vine, yet the Bug's artesian product isclear, tasteless and wholly without the possibility of being blowninto bubbles. When a large drop has collected, the tip of the abdomenencloses a retort of air, inserts this in the drop and forces it out. In some way an imponderable amount of oil or dissolved wax isextruded and mixed with the drop, an invisible shellac which toughensthe bubble and gives it an astounding glutinous endurance. As long asthe abdominal air-pump can be extended into the atmosphere, so longdoes the pile of bubbles grow until the insect is deep buried, and topenetrate this is as unpleasant an achievement for small marauders asto force a cobweb entanglement. I have draped a big pile of bubblesaround the beak of an insect-eating bird, and watched it shake itshead and wipe its beak in evident disgust at the clinging oily films. In the north we have the bits of fine white foam which wecharacteristically call frog-spittle, but these tropic relatives havebigger bellows and their covering is like the interfering mass offilms which emerges from the soap-bubble bowl when a pipe is thrustbeneath the surface and that delicious gurgling sound produced. 

The most marvelous part of the whole thing is that the undistilledwell which the Bubble Bug taps would often overwhelm it in an instant, either by the burning acidity of its composition, or the rubbercoating of death into which it hardens in the air. Yet with thiscurrent of lava or vitriol, our Bug does three wonderful things, itdistills sweet water for its present protective cell of bubbles, itdraws purest nourishment for continual energy to run its bellows andpump, and simultaneously it fills its blood and tissues with a pungentflavor, which in the future will be a safeguard against the attacks ofbirds and lizards. Little by little its wings swell to full spread andstrength, muscles are fashioned in its hind legs, which in time willshoot it through great distances of space, and pigment of the mostbrilliant yellow and black forms on its wing covers. When at last itshuts down its little still and creeps forth through the filmy veil, it is immature no longer, but a brilliant frog-hopper, sitting on themost conspicuous leaves, trusting by pigmental warning to advertiseits inedibility, and watchful for a mate, so that the future may holdno dearth of Bubble Bugs. 

On my first tramp each season in the tropical jungle, I see thelegionary army ants hastening on their way to battle, and theleaf-cutters plodding along, with chlorophyll hods over theirshoulders, exactly as they did last year, and the year preceding, andprobably a hundred thousand years before that. The Colony Egos ofarmy and leaf-cutters may quite reasonably be classified according toKingdom. The former, with carnivorous, voracious, nervous, vitallyactive members, seems an intangible, animal-like organism; while thestolid, vegetarian, unemotional, weather-swung Attas, resemble theflowing sap of the food on which they subsist--vegetable. 

Yet, whatever the simile, the net of unconscious precedent is tooclosely drawn, the mesh of instinct is too fine to hope for anyinitiative. This was manifested by the most significant andspectacular occurrence I have ever observed in the world of insects. One year and a half ago I studied and reported upon, a nest of Ecitonsor army ants. [3] Now, eighteen months later, apparently the same armyappeared and made a similar nest of their own bodies, in the identicalspot near the door of the outhouse, where I had found them before. Again we had to break up the temporary colony, and killed aboutthree-quarters of the colony with various deadly chemicals. 

[Footnote 3: See page 58. ]

In spite of all the tremendous slaughter, the Ecitons, in lateafternoon, raided a small colony of Wasps-of-the-Painted-Nest. Theselittle chaps construct a round, sub-leaf carton-home, as large as agolf ball, which carries out all the requirements of counter shadingand of ruptive markings. The flattened, shadowed under surface waswhite, and most of the sloping walls dark brown, down which extendedeight white lines, following the veins of the leaf overhead. The sideclose to the stem of the leaf, and consequently always in deep shadow, was pure white. The eaves catching high lights were black. All thismarvelous merging with leaf tones went for naught when once an advanceEciton scout located the nest. 

As the deadly mob approached, the wasplets themselves seemed torealize the futility of offering battle, and the entire colony offorty-four gathered in a forlorn group on a neighboring leaf, whiletheir little castle was rifled--larvæ and pupæ torn from their cellsand rushed down the stems to the chaos which was raging in Eciton'sown home. The wasps could guard against optical discovery, but theblind Ecitons had senses which transcended vision, if not even scent. 

Late that night, our lanterns showed the remnants of the Eciton armywandering aimlessly about, making near approach impossible, butapparently lacking any definite concerted action. 

At six o'clock the following morning I started out for a swim, when atthe foot of the laboratory steps I saw a swiftly-moving, broad line ofarmy ants on safari, passing through the compound to the beach. Itraced them back under the servants' quarters, through two clumps ofbamboos to the outhouse. Later I followed along the column down to theriver sand, through a dense mass of underbrush, through a hollow log, up the bank, back through light jungle--to the outhouse again, and ona large fallen log, a few feet beyond the spot where their nest hadbeen, the ends of the circle _actually came together_! It was the mostastonishing thing, and I had to verify it again and again before Icould believe the evidence of my eyes. It was a strong column, sixlines wide in many places, and the ants fully believed that they wereon their way to a new home, for most were carrying eggs or larvæ, although many had food, including the larvæ of the Painted NestWasplets. For an hour at noon during heavy rain, the column weakenedand almost disappeared, but when the sun returned, the lines rejoined, and the revolution of the vicious circle continued. 

There were several places which made excellent points of observation, and here we watched and marveled. Careful measurement of the greatcircle showed a circumference of twelve hundred feet. We timed theladen Ecitons and found that they averaged two to two andthree-quarter inches a second. So a given individual would completethe round in about two hours and a half. Many guests were ploddingalong with the ants, mostly staphylinids of which we secured fivespecies, a brown histerid beetle, a tiny chalcid, and several Phoridflies, one of which was winged. 

The fat Histerid beetle was most amusing, getting out of breath everyfew feet, and abruptly stopping to rest, turning around in its tracks, standing almost on its head, and allowing the swarm of ants to run upover it and jump off. Then on it would go again, keeping up theterrific speed of two and a half inches a second for another yard. Itscolor was identical with the Ecitons' armor, and when it folded up, nothing could harm it. Once a worker stopped and antennæd itsuspiciously, but aside from this, it was accepted as one of the lineof marchers. Along the same route came the tiny Phorid flies, winglessbut swift as shadows, rushing from side to side, over ants, leaves, débris, impatient only at the slowness of the army. 

All the afternoon the insane circle revolved; at midnight the hostswere still moving, the second morning many had weakened and droppedtheir burdens, and the general pace had very appreciably slackened. But still the blind grip of instinct held them. On, on, on they mustgo! Always before in their nomadic life there had been a goal--asanctuary of hollow tree, snug heart of bamboos--surely this terriblegrind must end somehow. In this crisis, even the Spirit of the Armywas helpless. Along the normal paths of Eciton life he could inspireendless enthusiasm, illimitable energy, but here his material unitswere bound upon the wheel of their perfection of instinct. Through sunand cloud, day and night, hour after hour there was found no Ecitonwith individual initiative enough to turn aside an ant's breadth fromthe circle which he had traversed perhaps fifteen times: the mastersof the jungle had become their own mental prey. 

Fewer and fewer now came along the well worn path; burdens litteredthe line of march, like the arms and accoutrements thrown down by aretreating army. At last a scanty single line struggled past--tired, hopeless, bewildered, idiotic and thoughtless to the last. Then somehalf dead Eciton straggled from the circle along the beach, and threwthe line behind him into confusion. The desperation of totalexhaustion had accomplished what necessity and opportunity and normallife could not. Several others followed his scent instead of thatleading back toward the outhouse, and as an amoeba gradually flowsinto one of its own pseudopodia, so the forlorn hope of the greatEciton army passed slowly down the beach and on into the jungle. Wouldthey die singly and in bewildered groups, or would the remnant drawtogether, and again guided by the super-mind of its Mentor lay thefoundation of another army, and again come to nest in my outhouse?

Thus was the ending still unfinished, the finale buried in thefuture--and in this we find the fascination of Nature and of Science. Who can be bored for a moment in the short existence vouchsafed ushere; with dramatic beginnings barely hidden in the dust, with theexcitement of every moment of the present, and with all of cosmicpossibility lying just concealed in the future, whether of Betelgeuze, of Amoeba or--of ourselves? _Vogue la galère!_

APPENDIX OF SCIENTIFIC NAMES

Page Line

 4 26 Moriche Oriole; _Icterus chrysocephalus_ (Linné)

 8 10 Toad; _Bufo guttatus Schneid_. 

 18 3 Bat; _Furipterus horrens_ (F. Cuv. )

 4 Large Bats; _Vampyrus spectrum_ (Linné)

 6 Vampire Bats; _Desmodus rotundus_ (Geoff. )

 22 5 Giant Catfish, Boom-boom; _Doras granulosus_ Valen. 

 23 5 Kiskadee; _Pitangus s. Sulphuratus_ (Linné)

 25 26 Parrakeets; _Touit batavica_ (Bodd. )

 26 Great Black Orioles; _Ostinops d. Decumanus_ (Pall. )

 26 5 House Wrens; _Troglodytes musculus clarus_ Berl. And Hart

 29 5 Coati-mundi; _Nasua n. Nasua_ (Linné)

 32 2 Frog; _Phyllomedusa_ sp. 

 34 18 Mazaruni Daisies; _Sipanea pratensis_ Aubl. 

 20 Button Weed; _Spermacoce_ sp. 

 36 23 Melancholy Tyrant; _Tyrannus melancholicus satrapa_ (Cab. And Hein. )

 37 2 Monarch; _Anosia plexippus_ (Linné)

 38 7 Red-breasted Blue Chatterer; _Cotinga cotinga_ Linné

 18 Yellow Papilio; _Papilio thoas_ Linné

 49 26 Parrakeets; _Touit batavica_ (Bodd. )

 52 3 Purple-throated Cotinga; _Cotinga cayana_ (Linné)

 53 15 Dark-breasted Mourner; _Lipaugus simplex_ Licht. 

 54 26 Toucans; _Ramphastus vitellinus_ Licht. 

 59 6 White-fronted Ant-bird; _Pithys albifrons_ (Linné)

 60 16 Army Ants; _Eciton burchelli_ Westwood

 97 10 Great Green Kingfisher; _Chloroceryle amazona_ (Lath. )

 11 Tiny Emerald Kingfisher; _Chloroceryle americana_ (Gmel. )

103 25 Gecko; _Thecadactylus rapicaudus_ (Houtt. )

109 8 Howling Monkeys; _Alouatta seniculus macconnelli_ Elliot

113 7 Bower Bird; _Ptilonorhynchus violaceus_ (Vieill. )

116 24 Cassava; _Janipha manihot_ Kth. 

126 20 Frog, Gawain; _Phyllomedusa_ sp. 

132 17 Marine Toad; _Bufo marinus_ (Linné)

133 8 Scarlet-thighed Leaf-walker; _Phyllobates inguinalis_. 

149 2 Attas, Leaf-cutting Ants; _Atta cephalotes_ (Fab. )

151 12 Fruit Bats; _Vampyrus spectrum_ (Linné)

152 11 King Vulture; _Gypagus papa_ (Linné)

 11 Harpy Eagle; _Harpia harpyja_ (Linné)

163 3 Ani; _Crotophaga ani_ Linné

 7 Marine Toad; _Bufo marinus_ (Linné)

164 19 White-faced Opossum; _Metachirus o. Opossum_ (Linné)

173 1 Attas, Leaf-cutting Ants; _Atta cephalotes_ (Fab. )

 5 Hummingbird; _Phoethornis r. Ruber_ (Linné)

174 7 Tamandua; _Tamandua t. Tetradactyla_ (Linné)

175 1 Trogon; _Trogon s. Strigilatus_ (Linné)

 9 Tarantula Hawks; _Pepsis_ sp. 

181 17 Cicada larvæ; _Quesada gigas_ Oliv. 

182 5 Roaches; _Attaphila_ sp. 

231 26 Manatee; _Trichechus manatus_ Linné

232 24 Crocodile; _Caiman sclerops_ (Schneid. )

233 6 Jacana; _Jacana j. Jacana_ (Linné)

 8 Gallinule; _Ionornis martinicus_ (Linné)

 9 Green Herons; _Butorides striata_ Linné

 10 Egrets; _Leucophoyx t. Thula_ (Molina)

233 17 Kiskadees; _Pitangus sulphuratus_ (Linné)

 19 Black Witch; _Crotophaga ani_ (Linné)

 19 House Wren; _Troglodytes musculus clarus_ Berl. And Hart

 22 Manatee; _Trichechus manatus_ (Linné)

242 1 Jacana; _Jacana j. Jacana_ (Linné)

 3 Gallinule; _Ionornis martinicus_ (Linné)

243 15 Mongoose; _Mungos mungo_ (Gmel. )

246 11 Little Egret; _Leucophoyx t. Thula_ (Molina)

 14 Tri-colored Heron; _Hydranassa tricolor_ (P. L. S. Mull. )

 15 Little Blue Heron; _Florida c. Caerulea_ (Linné)

249 14 White Egret; _Casmerodius egretta_ (Gmel. )

250 10 Night Heron; _Nyctanassa violacea cayennensis_ (Linné)

254 1 Giant Catfish, Boom-boom; _Doras granulosus_ Valen. 

256 6 Long-armed Beetle; _Acrocinus longimanus_ (Linné)

276 10 Rufus Hummingbird; _Phoethornis r. Ruber_ (Linné)

278 16 Tapping Wasp; _Synoeca irina_ Spinola

280 10 Mazaruni Daisy; _Sipanea pratensis_ Aubl. 

 21 Trogons; _Trogonurus c. Curucui_ (Linné)

282 10 Quadrille Bird; _Leucolepis musica musica_ (Bodd. )

284 3 Bubble Bugs; _Cercopis ruber_

289 16 Army Ants; _Eciton burchelli_ Westwood

INDEX

A

_Acrocinus longimanus_, 255-258

Allamander, 121

_Alouatta seniculus macconnelli_, 109

Ani, 163, 233

_Anosia plexippus_, 37

Antbirds, white-fronted, 59, 227

Antlions, 27, 28

Ants, Army, 58, 60, 154, 282, 289; attack on wasps, 290; circular marching of, 291-294; cleaning of, 79-81; cleaning of ground, 77; crippled, 70, 71, 81, 82; enemies, 72; foraging lines, 64; guests, 88, 292; labor, division of, 67; larvæ, 87; nest, 59-61, 74, 83, 289; nest entrance, 74; observing, methods of, 63; odor, 62, 64; parasites, 292; prey of, 67; rain, reaction to, 65, 66; refuse heaps, 77, 78; scavengers of nest piles, 78; speed of, 68, 69, 292; spinning, 84-86; vitality, 69

Ants, _Azteca_, 278

Ants, Borneo telegraph, 279

Ants, Leaf-cutting, 7, 152, 173, 289; at home, 172, 194; attack, method of guarding against, 177; attack, method of, 177-179; battle of giant soldiers, 168-171; castes, 166; enemies, 162-163; flight of kings and queens, 185-188; fungus, 180, 181; gardens, fungus, 179-181, 189; instinct, 190-192; leaf-chewing in nest, 180; leaves, carrying, 158-162; leaves, method of cutting, 158; name, origin of, 156; nest, 172; nest, foundation of, 152, 153, 189, 190; parasites, external, 176; paths, 163-165; queen, 152, 153; queens, young, in nest, 185; raids on garden, 154-155; scavengers of nest, 176; speed of, 165-166; soldier, description of, 177-178; trails, 163-165; visitors at nest, 174-176; worker, description of, 156, 157

_Attaphila_, 182-185

Attas. See Ants, Leaf-cutting. 

_Atta cephalotes_, 155, 173

B

Bamboos, 9, 13, 23-25

Bats, 17-19

Bats, fruit, 151

Bats, vampire, 4, 18-21, 111, 208

Beach, Jungle, 90-111

Beena, 118

Bees, 35-37, 175

Beetle, 23

Beetle, Histerid, 292

Beetle, long-armed, 256-258

Beetle, rove, 72-73

Beetle, Staphylinid, 292

Beetle, water, in roots, 103

Boom-boom, 22, 252-255

Botanical Gardens, 122

Bower Bird, Purple, 113

Bougainvillia, 121

Boviander, flowers of, 120

_Bufo guttatus_, 8

_Bufo marinus_, 132, 163

Bugs, bubble, 284-288

Bugs, doodle, 28

_Butorides striata_, 233

Butterfly, 37, 125

Butterfly, beryl and jasper, 42

Butterfly, migrating, 259-263

Butterfly, Monarch, 37

Butterfly, Morpho, 51

Butterfly, Social gathering of, 268-273

Butterfly, Yellow papilio, 38

Button weed, 34

C

_Caiman sclerops_, 232

Caladium, 118

Casareep, 117

Cashew trees, 4

_Casmerodius egretta_, 249

Cassava, 116

Cassia, 44

Catfish, Giant. See Boom-boom, 22, 253, 254, 273

_Catopsilia_, species of, 268

_Cercopis ruber_, 284

_Cereus_, night blooming, 218

Chanties, 6

Chatterer, Red-breasted Blue, 38

_Chloroceryle amazona_, 97

Chloroceryle americana, 97

Cicada, 36, 37

Cicada, song of, 283

Cicada, larvæ. See _Quesada gigas_. 

Clearing, Jungle, 34-57, 275

Clearing, after interval of year, 276

Coati-mundi, 29

Color, 53, 54

Convicts, 5, 7

Convicts, singing hymns, 109

_Cotinga cayana_, 52, 53

_Cotinga cotinga_, 38

Cotinga, Purple-throated, 52, 53

Cotton, Indian, 117

Cotton, Sea Island, 117

Crabs, in roots, 103

Crocodile, 232

_Crotophaga ani_, 163, 233

Cuyuni River, 9

D

Daisies, Mazaruni, 34, 280

Devilla blossoms, 283

Doodle-bugs, 28

_Doras granulosus_, 22, 254

E

Eagle, Harpy, 152

Eciton. See Army Ants

_Eciton burchelli_, 60, 289

Eggs, Butterfly, 41-43

Egrets, 233, 246, 249

_Ereops_, 264, 265

F

Fer-de-lance, 206

Flamboyant, 122

Flies, Chalcid, 292

Flies, Crane, in roots, 104-106

Flies, Phorid, 292

Flies, as scavengers, 78

_Florida c. Caerulea_, 246

Flowers of boviander, 120

Flycatcher, Kiskadee, 23, 233

Flycatcher, Melancholy Tyrant, 36

Frangipani, 122

Frog, Scarlet-thighed Leaf-walker, 133

Frog, Tree, 32, 132

_Furipterus horrens_, 17, 18

G

Gallinule, 233, 242

Galis, 45-47

Garden, Akawai Indian, 115-119

Garden, Boviander, 120

Garden, Coolie and Negro, 120

Garden, Georgetown Botanical, 122, 230

Garden, Tropic, 230-251

Gawain, 31-33, 126

Gecko, 103, 104

Ghost, Kartabo, 25

God-birds, 26

Guests, Army Ant, 72

Guinevere, 123-148

_Gypagus papa_, 152

H

Hammocks, 195 accident in, 204; capturing bats from, 218-220; Carib, 197, 198; environment and dangers, 200, 201; hummingbirds on, 223, 224; slinging of, 198, 199, 203, 209, 210; sounds and scents, 213-215; trapping from, 205, 206; watching army ants from, 225, 228; weaver-birds nesting on, 224

_Harpia harpyja_, 152

Herons, green, 233

Herons, little blue, 246

Herons, night, 250

Herons, rookery, 244-251

Herons, tricolored, 246

Hope, 16

Hummingbirds, 97, 174, 223, 276

Hyacinth, water, 121

_Hydranassa tricolor_, 246

I

_Icterus chrysocephalus_, 4

_Ionornis martinicus_, 233, 242

J

Jacana, 233, 242

_Jacana j. Jacana_, 233, 242

_Janipha manihot_, 116

K

Kalacoon, 1

Kartabo, 1

Kartabo, history, 10-12

Kartabo, inmates, 21

Kartabo, morning at, 23

Kib, 29

Kibihée, 29

Kingfisher, Great Green, 97

Kingfisher, Tiny Emerald, 97

Kiskadee, 23, 233, 243

Kunami, 117

Kyk-over-al, 11, 12

L

_Leucolepis m. Musica_, 282

_Leucophoyx t. Thula_, 233, 246

Lilies, water, 121

_Lipaugus simplex_, 58

Lotus, 121

M

Manatee, 231-236

Martins, 4

"Mazacuni" River, 107

Mazaruni River, 9

_Metachirus o. Opossum_, 164

Monarch Butterfly, 37

Mongoose, 248

Monkeys, 25

Monkeys, Howling, 109

Mosquitoes, 202, 211

Mourner, Dark-breasted, 53

_Mungos mungo_, 243

N

_Nasua n. Nasua_, 29

Niebelungs, 49

O

Opossum, 164

Orchid, Toko-nook, 119

Oriole, Great Black, 25

Oriole, Moriche, 4

_Ostinops d. Decumanus_, 25

P

Paddlers, 5

Palm, Cocoanut, 121

_Papilio thoas_, 38

Parasite, egg, 43, 44

Parrakeets, 25, 49-51

_Pepsis_, sp. , 175

Pets, 28-33

_Phoethornis r. Ruber_, 174, 276

_Phyllomedusa_, 32, 126

_Phyllomedusa bicolor_, 145

_Phyllobates inguinalis_, 133

_Pitangus s. Sulphuratus_, 23, 233, 243

_Pithys albifrons_, 59

Piwari, 117

Pool, Jungle Rain, 126-132

_Ptilonorhynchus violaceus_, 113

Q

Quadrille Bird, 282, 283

_Quesada gigas_, 181

R

_Ramphastus vitellinus_, 54, 55

Roach, 182

Rocks, tidal, 265, 266

Roots, 98-106, 236

_Rozites gongylophora_, 181

Rushes, 264

S

Scorpions, 181

Sedges, Scirpus, 264, 265

Servants, negro, 14, 15

_Sipanea pratensis_, 34, 280

Snake, tree, in hammock, 201

_Spermacoce_ sp. , 34

Springtails, in army ants' nest, 88

Striders, water, 129, 130

Sunrise, 107, 108

Swimming at night, 108-111

_Synoeca irina_, 278-280

T

Tadpoles, 127, 130-148

Tadpoles, colors of, 146, 147

Tadpoles, red-fins, 132, 133, 136, 139, 141, 144

Tadpoles, short-tailed blacks, 132, 138

Tamandua, 174

_Tamandua t. Tetradactyla_, 174

Tanager, Blue, 111

Tarantula, 23

Tarantula Hawks, 175

Termites, 154, 162

_Thecadactylus rapicauda_, 103

_Thraupis episcopus_, 111

Tidal, area, ecology of, 266-268

Toad, 7, 8

Toad, Marine, 132, 163

Toko-nook, Orchid, 119

Toucans, 25, 54, 55, 56

_Touit batavica_, 25, 49

Tree, Fallen, 95

Tree, Prostrate, reactions of, 96, 97

Treetop, Fauna of, 95

_Trichechus manatus_, 231, 233

_Troglodytes musculus clarus_, 26, 233

Trogon, 175, 280-282

_Trogan s. Strigilatus_, 175

_Trogonurus c. Curucui_, 280

Tyrant, Melancholy, 36

_Tyrannus melancholicus satrapa_, 36

V

_Vampyrus spectrum_, 18

Vervain, 35

_Victoria regia_, 231, 237, 240, 241

Vulture, King, 152

W

Wasps, Ebony, 175

Wasps, Painted Nest, 289-291

Wasps, Tapping, 278-280

Wind, Voice of, 21

Witch, Black, 233

Wrens, House, 26, 27, 233

 * * * * *