SPIDERS AND THEIR RELATIVES 99 



well above the ants. His legs are so slender that 

 the ant does not easily blunder against them, and, 

 if necessary, he can lift five of his eight legs at 

 once and balance on the other three. It is seldom 

 that he cannot find clear space for three legs 

 while the others are held up out of harm's way. 

 At the same time the harvestman is safe from the 

 birds that follow the ants, since the birds are 

 careful not to come too close to army ants. 



The spider relatives in the jungle that everyone 

 talked about and detested were neither scorpions 

 nor tarantulas. They were the tiny red bugs 

 that are relatives of our northern chiggers, and 

 the somewhat larger ticks, which are like the 

 wood ticks we find in our own woods. 



It is hard to say which of the two pests is the 

 more troublesome. The red bugs, which are so 

 tiny that they can barely be seen without a 

 microscope, could be somewhat discouraged if one 

 sprinkled one's skin with yellow, sneeze-producing 

 "flowers of sulphur" while dressing in the morn- 

 ing. When they did succeed in burrowing under 

 one's skin in spite of the powder, they produced 

 an itching spot that demanded to be scratched 

 whether scratching was convenient or not. 



I did not find any sure way of keeping off the 

 flat brown ticks. In January when I first reached 

 the jungle I found a crop of small newly hatched 

 ticks over all the plants. They waited hopefully 

 on nearly every leaf, stretching out their forelegs 



