The Naturalist in Nicaragua Part 17

Two of the women were lying ill, and one seemed to be dying. There was no room for us in the hut if we had been willing to enter it.

We slung our hammocks under a small open-sided shed near by and pa.s.sed a miserable night. A strong cold wind was blowing, and the swinging of the hammocks caused by it kept a number of dogs continually barking and snapping at our hammocks and boots. We rose cold and cramped at daylight, and without waiting to make ready any coffee, saddled our beasts and rode away.

A little maize was grown about this place, and the people told us that sugar thrived, but the plantations of it were small and ill-kept, and everything had a look of poverty and decadence. They said that twenty years ago there was no bush growing around their house. The country was then open gra.s.sed savannahs, and there was less fever. Now the bush grows up to their very doors, and they will not take the trouble to cut it down even to save themselves from the attacks of fever. Here as everywhere throughout the central provinces, deep ingrained indolence paralyses all industry or enterprise, and with the means of plenty and comfort on every side, the people live in squalid poverty.

For four leagues we rode over high ranges with very fine valleys separating them, containing many thatched houses and fields of maize, sugar, and beans. Where not now cultivated the sides of the ranges were covered with weedy-looking shrubs and low trees, proving that all the land had at one time been cropped, and this was further shown by the old lines of pinuela fences and ditches that were seen here and there amongst the brushwood. As we got further south the alluvial flats in the valleys increased in size and fertility, and the cultivated fields were enclosed with permanent fences. On some of the ranges we crossed, the rocks were amygdaloidal, containing nests of a white zeolite, the fractured planes of which glittered like gems on the pathway.

Eight leagues from Matagalpa we reached the small town of Tierrabona, where, as the name implies, the land is very good.

Every house had an enclosure around it, planted with maize and beans: and though it was evident that the land was cropped year after year, it still seemed to bear well. We stopped at a small brook just outside the town, and ate some provisions we had brought from Matagalpa. Some speckled tiger-beetles ran about the dusty road, and on wet muddy places near the stream groups of b.u.t.terflies collected to suck the moisture. Amongst them were some fine swallow-tails (Papilio), quivering their wings as they drank, and lovely blue hair-streaks (Theclae). The latter, when they alight, rub their wings together, moving their curious tail-like appendages up and down. Great dragon-flies hawked after flies; while on the surface of still pools "whirligigs" (Gyrinidae) wheeled about in mazy gyrations, just as they are seen to do at home.

Savannahs, sparingly timbered, were next crossed; then we reached one of those level plains, with black soil and blocks of porous trachyte lying on the surface, which are swamps in the rainy season, and have for vegetation sedgy gra.s.ses and scattered jicara trees, cactuses and th.o.r.n.y acacias. Up to the time we pa.s.sed, there had been no rain in these parts, and the plain was dry and bare, with great cracks in the black soil. The gra.s.s had not sprung up, not a breath of air was stirring, and the heated air quivered over the parched ground, forming in the distance an imperfect mirage.

Directly overhead the noonday sun hung hot in the hazy sky. As we moodily toiled over the plain, my attention was arrested by a dust whirlwind that suddenly sprang up about fifty yards to our left.

The few dry leaves on the ground began to whirl round and round, and to ascend. In a minute a spiral column was formed, reaching, perhaps, to the height of fifty feet, consisting of dust and dry dead leaves, all whirling round with the greatest rapidity. The column was only a few yards in diameter. It moved slowly along, nearly parallel with our course, but only lasting a few minutes.

Before I could point it out to Velasquez, who had ridden on ahead, it had dissolved away. I had been very familiar with these air eddies in Australia, and had hoped to carry on some investigations concerning them, begun there, in Central America; but, though common on the plains of Mexico and of South America, this was the only one I witnessed in Central America.

The interest with which I regarded these miniature storms was due to the a.s.sistance that their study was likely to give in the discussion of the cause of all circular movements of the atmosphere, including the dreaded typhoon and cyclone. The chief meteorologists who have discussed this difficult question have approached it from the side of the larger hurricanes. There is a complete gradation from the little dust eddies up through larger whirlwinds and tornadoes to the awful typhoons and cyclones of China and the West Indies; and it has long been my opinion that if meteorologists devoted their attention to the smaller eddies that can be looked at from the outside, and their commencement, continuance, and completion watched and chronicled, they could not fail to obtain a large amount of information to guide them in the study of cyclonic movements of the atmosphere.

Unless the smaller whirlwinds are quite distinct from the larger ones in their origin, the theories advanced by meteorologists to account for the latter are certainly untenable. According to the celebrated M. Dove, cyclones owe their origin to the intrusion of the upper counter trade-wind into the lower trade-wind current.* (*

"Law of Storms" page 246.) More lately, Professor T.B. Maury has stated that "the origin of cyclones is found in the tendency of the south-east trade-winds to invade the territory of the north-east trades by sweeping over the equator into our hemisphere, the lateral conflict of the currents giving an initial impulse to bodies of air by which they begin to rotate." Cyclones having thus originated, Professor Maury considers that they are continued and intensified by the vapour condensed in their vortex forming a vacuum.* (* "Quarterly Journal of Science" 1872 page 418.)

Humboldt had long ago ascribed whirlwinds to the meeting of opposing currents of air.* (* "Aspects of Nature" volume 1 page 17.

) There is this dynamical objection to the theory. The movements of the air in whirlwinds are much more rapid than in any known straight current, such as the trade winds; and it is impossible that two opposing currents should generate between them one of much greater force and rapidity than either. If force A joins with force B, surely force C, the product, must have the power of both A and B. But even if this fundamental objection to the theory could be set aside, the small whirlwinds could not thus arise, as they are most frequent when the air is nearly or quite motionless.

Then, again, when we turn to Professor Maury's theory that the cyclones, having been initiated by the conflict of contrary currents, are continued and intensified by the condensation of vapour in their vortex forming a vacuum, we find it negatived by the fact that in the smaller whirlwinds the air is dry, and there is consequently no condensation of vapour; yet, in comparison with their size, they are of as great violence as the fiercest typhoon.

Tylor describes the numerous dust whirlwinds he saw on the plains of Mexico,* (* "Anahuac" by E.B. Tylor page 21.) Clarke those on the steppes of Russia, and Bruce those on the deserts of Africa, and nowhere is there mention made of any condensation of vapour. I have seen scores of whirlwinds in Australia, many rising to a height of over one hundred feet; yet there was never any perceptible condensation of vapour, though some of them were of sufficient force to tear off limbs of trees, and carry up the tents of gold-diggers into the air. Franklin describes a whirlwind of greater violence than any of these. It commenced in Maryland by taking up the dust over a road in the form of an inverted sugar-loaf, and soon increased greatly in size and violence.

Franklin followed it on horseback, and saw it enter a wood, where it twisted and turned round large trees: leaves and boughs were carried up so high that they appeared to the eye like flies. Again there was no condensation of vapour.

We thus see that whirlwinds of great violence occur when the air is dry, and there can be no condensation. When, however, they are formed at sea, and occasionally on land, the air next the surface is saturated with moisture; and this moisture is condensed when it is carried to a great height, forming clouds, or falling in showers of rain and hail. This condensation of vapour is an effect, and not a cause, and takes place, not in the centre, but at the top or at the sides of the ascending column. This is well shown in an account, by an eye-witness, of a whirlwind that did great damage near the sh.o.r.e of Lough Neagh, in Ireland, in August 1872.* (*

"Nature" volume 6 page 541.) It was about thirty yards in diameter.

It destroyed several haystacks, and carried the hay up into the air out of sight. It partially unroofed houses, and tore off the branches of trees. The railway station at Randalstown was much injured; great numbers of slates, and two and a half hundredweight of lead were torn from the roof. When pa.s.sing over a portion of the lake, it presented the appearance of a waterspout. On land everything that it lapped up was whirled round and round, and carried upwards in the centre, whilst dense clouds surrounded the outside and came down near to the earth.

As above mentioned, I had in Australia many opportunities of studying the dust whirlwinds; and as I looked upon them as the initial form of a cyclone, I paid much attention to them. On a small plain, near to Maryborough, in the province of Victoria, they were of frequent occurrence in the hot season. This plain was about two miles across, and was nearly surrounded by trees. In calm, sultry weather, during the heat of the day, there were often two at once in action in different parts of it. They were only a few yards in diameter, but reached to a height of over one hundred feet, and were often, in their higher part, bent out of their perpendicular by upper aerial currents. The dust and leaves they carried up rendered their upward spiral movement very conspicuous. No one who studied these whirlwinds could for a moment believe that they were caused by conflicting currents of air. They occurred most frequently when there was least wind; and this particular plain seemed to be peculiarly suitable for their formation, because it was nearly surrounded by trees, and currents of air were prevented.

They lasted several minutes, slowly moving across the plain, like great pillars of smoke.* (* A friend of mine tells me that he saw a similar whirlwind rise at noon one still summer day, and traverse the dusty road on the Chesil Bank between Portland and Weymouth. It travelled fully half a mile, about as fast as he could walk; and the point where it met the ground was not thicker than his walking stick. By and by it swept out to sea, where the dust gradually fell.)

When attentively watched from a short distance, it was seen that as soon as one was formed, the air immediately next the heated soil, which was before motionless, or quivering as over a furnace, was moving in all directions towards the apex of the dust-column. As these currents approached the whirlwind, they quickened and carried with them loose dust and leaves into the spiral whirl. The movement was similar to that which occurs when a small opening is made at the bottom of a wide shallow vessel of water: all the liquid moves towards it, and a.s.sumes a spiral movement as it is drawn off.

The conclusion I arrived at, and which has since been confirmed by further study of the question, was, that the particles of air next the surface did not always rise immediately they were heated, but that they often remained and formed a stratum of rarefied air next the surface, which was in a state of unstable equilibrium. This continued until the heated stratum was able, at some point where the ground favoured a comparatively greater acc.u.mulation of heat, to break through the overlying strata of air, and force its way upwards. An opening once made, the whole of the heated air moved towards it and was drained off, the heavier layers sinking down and pressing it out. Sir George Airey has suggested to me that the reason of the particles of air not rising as they are heated, when there is no wind blowing, may be due to their viscosity: and this suggestion is correct. That air does not always rise when heated, appears from the hot winds of Australia, which blow from the heated interior towards the cooler south, instead of rising directly upwards. Sultry, close weather, that sometimes lasts for several days, would also be impossible on the a.s.sumption that air rises as soon as it is heated.

This explanation supplies us with the force that is necessary to drive the air with the great velocity with which it moves in whirlstorms. The upper, colder, and heavier air is pressing upon the heated stratum, and the greater the area over which the latter extends, the greater will be the weight pressing upon it, and the greater the violence of the whirlwind when an opening is formed for the ascent of the heated air. There is a gradual pa.s.sage, from the small dust eddies, through larger whirlstorms such as that at Lough Neagh, to tornadoes and the largest cyclone; every step of the gradation might be verified by numerous examples; and if this book were a treatise on meteorology, it might be admissible to give them; but to do this would take up too much of my s.p.a.ce, and I shall only now make some observations on the largest form of whirlstorm--the dreaded cyclone.

Just as over the little plain at Maryborough, protected by the surrounding forest from the action of the wind, the heated air acc.u.mulates over the surface until carried off in eddies, so, though on a vastly larger scale, in that great bight formed by the coasts of North and South America, having for its apex the Gulf of Mexico, there is an immense area in the northern tropics, nearly surrounded by land, forming a vast oceanic plain, shut off from the regular action of the trade-winds by the great islands of Cuba and Hayti, where the elements of the hurricane acc.u.mulate, and at last break forth. In this and such like areas, the lower atmosphere is gradually heated from week to week, and, as in Australia the quivering of the air over the hot ground foreshadows the whirlwind, and in Africa the mirage threatens the simoom, so in the West Indies a continuance of close, sultry weather, an oppressive calm, precedes the hurricane. When at last the huge vortex is formed, the heated atmosphere rushes towards it from all sides, and is drained upwards in a spiral column, just as in the dust-eddy, on a gigantic scale. Unlike the air of the dust-eddy, that of the hurricane coming from the warm surface of the ocean is nearly saturated with vapour, and this, as it is carried up and brought into contact with the colder air on the outside of the ascending column, is condensed and falls in torrents of rain, accompanied by thunder and lightning.

I advanced this theory to account for the origin of whirlwinds in a paper read before the Philosophical Inst.i.tute of Victoria in 1857.

It was afterwards communicated by the Astronomer-Royal to the "London Philosophical Magazine", where it appeared in January 1859.

A suggestion that I at the same time offered, that the opposite rotation of cyclones in the two hemispheres was due to the same causes as the westerly deflection of the trade-winds from a direct meridional course, has been generally adopted by physicists, and I am not without hopes that the main theory may also yet be accepted; but whether or not, I am confident that a study of the smaller eddies of air is the proper way to approach the difficult question of the origin of cyclones.

CHAPTER 17.

Cattle-raising.

Don Filiberto Trano's new house.

Horse-flies and wasps.

Teustepe.

Spider imitating ants.

Mimetic species.

Animals with special means of defence are conspicuously marked, or in other ways attract attention.

Accident to horse.

The "Mygale."

Illness.

Conclusion of journey.

AFTER crossing the trachytic plain, we reached a large cattle hacienda, and beyond, the river Chocoyo, on the banks of which was some good, though stony, pasture land. We saw here some fine cattle, and learnt that a little more care was taken in breeding them than is usual in Nicaragua. The country, with its rolling savannahs, covered with gra.s.s, is admirably suited for cattle-raising, and great numbers are exported to the neighbouring country of Costa Rica. Scarcely any attention is, however, paid to the improvement of the breeds. Few stations have reserve potreros of gra.s.s. In consequence, whenever an unusually dry season occurs, the cattle die by hundreds, and their bones may be seen lying all over the plains. Both Para and Guinea gra.s.s grow, when planted and protected, with the greatest luxuriance; and the latter especially forms an excellent reserve, as it grows in dense tufts that cannot be destroyed by the cattle. When not protected by fencing, however, the cattle and mules prefer these gra.s.ses so much to the native ones, that they are always close-cropped, and when the natural pasturage fails there is no reserve of the other to fall back on. I planted both the Para and Guinea gra.s.ses largely at the mines and at Pital, and we were able to keep our mules always in good condition with them.

About four o'clock in the afternoon our animals were getting tired, and we ourselves were rather fatigued, having been in the saddle since daylight, with the exception of a few minutes' rest at Tierrabona. We halted at a thatched cottage on some high stony savannah land, and were hospitably received by the peasant proprietor, Don Filiberto Trano. He informed us that we had entered the towns.h.i.+p of Teustepe, and that the town itself was eight leagues distant. The family consisted of Don Filiberto, his wife, and four or five children. They had just prepared for their own dinner a young fowl, stewed with green beans and other vegetables, and this they placed before us, saying that they would soon cook something else for themselves. We were too hungry to make any scruples, and after the poor, coa.r.s.e fare we had been used to, the savoury repast seemed the most delicious I ever tasted. I think we only got two meals on the whole journey that we really enjoyed.

This was one, the other the supper that the padre's housekeeper at Palacaguina cooked for us, and I have recorded at length the names of the parties to whom we were indebted for them.

Don Filiberto had about twenty cows, all of which that could be found were driven in at dusk, and the calves tied up. As they came in, the fowls were on the look-out for the garrapatos, or ticks; and the cows, accustomed to the process, stood quietly, while they flew up and picked them off their necks and flanks. The calves are always turned out with the cows in the morning, after the latter are milked, so that if not found again for some days, as is often the case in this bushy and unenclosed country, the cows are milked by them and do not go dry. They give very little milk, probably due to the entire want of care in breeding them. It is at once made into cheese, which forms a staple article of food amongst the poorer natives.

The small house was divided into three compartments, one being used as a kitchen. It was in rather a dilapidated condition, and Don Filiberto told me that he was busy building a new residence. I was curious to see what progress he was making with it, and he took me outside and showed me four old posts used for tying the cows to, which had evidently been in the ground for many years. "There," he said, "are the corner-posts, and I shall roof it with tiles." He was quite grave, but I could not help smiling at his faith. I have no doubt that, as long as he lives, he will lounge about all day, and in the evening, when his wife and children are milking the cows, will come out, smoke his cigarette, leaning against the door-post of his patched and propped-up dwelling, and contemplate the four old posts with a proud feeling of satisfaction that he is building a new house. Such a picture is typical of Nicaragua.

Don Filiberto told us that there was a limestone quarry not far from his house; and as I wished to learn whether it occurred in beds or veins, I proposed next morning to walk over to it, but he said we should need the mules to cross the river. Thinking, from his description, that it was only about a mile distant, I started on mule-back with him; but after riding fully a league, discovered that he actually did not know himself where it was, but was seeking for another man to show him. We at last arrived at the house of this man. He was absent. A boy showed us a small piece of the limestone. It was concretionary, and I learnt from him that it occurred in veins. I was vexed about the time we had lost, and the extra work we had given the poor mules; my only consolation was that as we rode back I picked a fine new longicorn beetle off the leaves of an overhanging tree.

When we came to settle up with our host he proposed to charge us twenty-five cents, just one s.h.i.+lling, or fourpence each. They had given us a good dinner and put themselves to much inconvenience to provide me with a bedstead, and this was their modest charge. Nor did they make it with any expectation that we would give more. It is the universal custom amongst the Mestizo peasantry to entertain travellers; to give them the best they have and to charge for the bare value of the provisions, and nothing for the lodging. We could so depend upon the hospitality of the lower cla.s.ses that every day we travelled on without any settled place to pa.s.s the night, convinced that we should be received with welcome at any hut that we might arrive at when our mules got tired or night came on. The only place in the whole journey where we had been received with hesitation was at the Indian house a day's journey beyond Olama.

There the people were pure Indians, and other circ.u.mstances made me conclude that the Indians were not so hospitable as the Mestizos.

We finally started about nine o'clock and rode over dry savannahs, where, although there was little gra.s.s, I was told that cattle did well browsing on the small brushwood with which the hills were covered. All the forenoon we travelled over stony ranges and dry plains and savannahs. At noon we reached the dry bed of a river and crossed it several times, but could find no water to quench our thirst, whilst the sun shone down on us with pitiless heat. About one o'clock we came to some pools where the bed of the river was bare rock with rounded hollows containing water, warm but clean, as the cattle could not walk over the smooth slopes to get at it. Here we halted for an hour and had some tiste and maize cakes, and cut some Guinea gra.s.s that grew amongst the rocks for our mules. Over the heated rocks scampered brown lizards, chasing each other and revelling in the suns.h.i.+ne. b.u.t.terflies on lazy wings came and settled on damp spots, and the cicada kept up his shrill continuous monotone, but not so loudly as he would later on when it got cooler. The cicada is supposed by some to pipe only during midday, but both in Central America and Brazil I found them loudest towards sunset, keeping up their shrill music until it was taken up by night-vocal crickets and locusts.

We were returning parallel to our course in going to Segovia, but several leagues to the westward, and this made a wonderful difference in the climate. There we were wading through muddy swamps and drenched with continual rains. Here the plains were parched with heat, vegetation was dried up, and there was scarcely any water in the river beds. The north-east trade-wind, before it reaches thus far, gives up its moisture to the forests of the Atlantic slope, and now pa.s.sed over without even a cloud to relieve the deep blue of the sky or temper the rays of the sun.

The vegetation on the plains was almost entirely composed of th.o.r.n.y plants and shrubs; acacias, cacti, and bromeliae were the most abundant. Animal life was scarce; there were a few flycatchers amongst the birds, and armadillos were the only mammals.

Horse-flies (Taba.n.u.s) were too numerous, and drops of blood trickled down our mules' faces where they had feasted. In some parts large, banded black and yellow wasps (Monedula surinamensis, Fabr.) came flying round us and had a threatening look as they hovered before our faces, but they were old acquaintances of mine in Brazil, and I knew that they were only searching about for the horse-flies with which they store their nests, just as other wasps do with spiders, first benumbing them with their sting. I noted here another instance of the instinctive dread that insects have of their natural enemies. The horse-flies were so bloodthirsty that we could kill them with the greatest ease with our hands on the mules'

necks, or if we drove them away they would return immediately. As soon, however, as a wasp came hawking round, the flies lost their sluggish apathy and disappeared amongst the bushes, and I do not think that excepting when gorged with blood they would easily fall a prey to their pursuers.

We were joined on the road by a storekeeper on his way to Teustepe.

He was armed with pistols, which it is the fas.h.i.+on to carry in Nicaragua, though many travellers have nothing more formidable in their holsters than a spirit flask and some biscuits. He talked as usual of threatened revolutionary risings, but these form the staple conversation throughout Central America amongst the middle cla.s.ses, and until they really do break out it is best not to believe in them. He told us also that the drought had been very great around Teustepe, and that the crops were destroyed by it.

About three we reached the town, and after buying some provisions to take with us, pushed on again. Below Teustepe we crossed the river Malacatoyo which empties into the Lake of Nicaragua, and beyond it the road pa.s.sed over a wild alluvial flat with high trees, amongst which we saw a troop of white-faced monkeys.

On the leaves of the bushes there were many curious species of Buprestidae, and I struck these and other beetles off with my net as I rode along.* [* Naturally the example of their chief inspired all the mining officials with an ardour for collecting insects; but, when riding with any of them through the forest or over the plains, Belt's trained eyes always saw so many more than the others that a saying arose that his mule a.s.sisted him by stopping before any specimen he had failed to notice!] After one such capture I observed what appeared to be one of the black stinging ants on the net. It was a small spider that closely resembled an ant, and so perfect was the imitation that it was not until I killed it that I determined that it was a spider and that I had needlessly feared its sting. What added greatly to the resemblance was that, unlike other spiders, it held up its two fore-legs like antennae, and moved them about just like an ant. Other species of spiders closely resemble stinging ants; in all of them the body is drawn out long like an ant, and in some the maxillary palpi are lengthened and thickened so as to resemble the head of one.

Ant-like spiders have been noticed throughout tropical America and also in Africa.* (* See "Nature" volume 3 page 508.) The use that the deceptive resemblance is to them has been explained to be the facility it affords them for approaching ants on which they prey. I am convinced that this explanation is incorrect so far as the Central American species are concerned. Ants, and especially the stinging species, are, so far as my experience goes, not preyed upon by any other insects. No disguise need be adopted to approach them, as they are so bold that they are more likely to attack a spider than a spider them. Neither have they wings to escape by flying, and generally go in large bodies easily found and approached. The real use is, I doubt not, the protection the disguise affords against small insectivorous birds. I have found the crops of some humming-birds full of small soft-bodied spiders, and many other birds feed on them. Stinging ants, like bees and wasps, are closely resembled by a host of other insects; indeed, whenever I found any insect provided with special means of defence I looked for imitative forms, and was never disappointed in finding them.

Stinging ants are not only closely copied in form and movements by spiders but by species of Hemiptera and Coleoptera, and the resemblance is often wonderfully close.* (* Amongst the longicorn beetles of Chontales, Mallocera spinicollis, Neoclytus Oesopus, and Diphyrama singularis, Bates, all closely resemble stinging ants when moving about on fallen logs.) All over the world wasps are imitated in form and movements by other insects, and in the tropics these mimetic forms are endless. In many cases the insect imitating is so widely removed, in the normal form of the order to which it belongs, from that of the insect imitated, that it is difficult to imagine how the first steps in the process of imitation took place.

Looking however at the immense variety of insect life in the tropics, and remembering that in early tertiary times nearly the whole world was in the same favourable condition as regards temperature (vegetation, according to Heer, extending to the poles), and must have supported a vast number of species and genera that were destroyed during the glacial period, we must suppose that, in that great variety of forms, it sometimes occurred that two species belonging to distinct orders somewhat resembled each other in form or colouration, and that the resemblance was gradually increased, when one species had special means of protection, by the other being benefited the more nearly it approached it in appearance.

It is to be remarked that the forms imitated have always some kind of defence against insectivorous birds or mammals; they are provided with stings or unpleasant odours or flavours, or are exceedingly swift in flight; excepting where inanimate nature is imitated for concealment. Thus I had an opportunity of proving in Brazil that some birds, if not all, reject the Heliconii b.u.t.terflies, which are closely resembled by b.u.t.terflies of other families and by moths. I observed a pair of birds that were bringing b.u.t.terflies and dragon-flies to their young, and although the Heliconii swarmed in the neighbourhood and are of weak flight so as to be easily caught, the birds never brought one to their nest. I had a still better means of testing both these and other insects that are mimicked in Nicaragua. The tame white-faced monkey I have already mentioned was extremely fond of insects, and would greedily munch up beetle or b.u.t.terfly given to him, and I used to bring to him any insects that I found imitated by others to see whether they were distasteful or not. I found he would never eat the Heliconii. He was too polite not to take them when they were offered to him, and would sometimes smell them, but invariably rolled them up in his hand and dropped them quietly again after a few moments. There could be no doubt, however, from the monkey's actions, that they were distasteful to him. A large species of spider (Nephila) also used to drop them out of its web when I put them into it. Another spider that frequented flowers seemed to be fond of them, and I have already mentioned a wasp that caught them to store its nest with.

Amongst the beetles there is a family that is just as much mimicked as the Heliconii are amongst the b.u.t.terflies. These are the Lampyridae, to which the fireflies belong. Many of the genera are not phosph.o.r.escent, but all appear to be distasteful to insectivorous mammals and birds. I found they were invariably rejected by the monkey, and my fowls would not touch them.