16£ THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



sea over a straight drop, a wall which gradually 

 rose to the eminence of the cliff which had first at- 

 tracted me to the island. Prospero's cave was not 

 visible from this point. The air was sweet with the 

 odor of a shrub with racemes of greenish-white 

 flowers, and three or four bees hummed over the 

 lures. These bees and these inconspicuous plants 

 were the Galapagos manifestation of tropical lux- 

 uriance, the best that the islands could produce. 

 There were many small, drab moths, and some of 

 the low, pale-barked trees were almost leafless from 

 the depredations of Httle green measuring worms, 

 presumably the larval form of the moths. A small- 

 billed finch was patiently stuffing her clamoring 

 full-grown attendant youngster with as many of 

 these worms as her careful search disclosed. 



Entomology in the Galapagos must be pursued 

 by painstaking examination of every leaf and twig, 

 hole and corner, crack and crevice. Turning over 

 large stones is one way of collecting, and we ap- 

 plied ourselves to this grubby method, on the steep 

 hillside among thorny scrub and cactus. Two large 

 reddish centipedes were our first reward, a dubious 

 delight to the non-naturalist, but most welcome to 

 our collecting bottles, as the only specimens of an 

 equal size that we had so far acquired had been 

 by the fragmentary method of taking them from 

 the stomachs of dissected hawks. The first scut- 

 tling rush of a tiny gecko was hailed with shouts, 

 for these little lizards are rather rare on the islands, 

 and we were doubly interested in seeing what dif- 

 ferences there might be between those from this 



