336 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



with provision for their eggs or maggots, and even 

 if most of their number were devoured by the 

 dragonflies and the yellow warbler, their race 

 would probably be preserved, furnishing satisfac- 

 tion to the small fraction of their descendants who 

 lived, and food for many other creatures. 



On the boobies there were hosts of feather flies, 

 so many in some cases, that they flew off at the 

 slightest disturbance, and could thus be counted 

 upon as another source of food. The ant and the 

 hawkmoth being both females with eggs almost 

 ready to be deposited, they might very reasonably 

 already be fertilized. The possibility of these par- 

 ticular plants being the kind upon which the cater- 

 pillars of the moth would thrive, are slight, yet the 

 thousand and first chance has many times insured 

 the life of a whole race. The queen ant would not 

 have a very difficult time in establishing a colony, 

 but the grubs of the June beetle would be lucky 

 indeed if they found sufficient nourishment in the 

 newly grown roots available in this instance. The 

 dragonflies would need some rain pools, and out of 

 the score, a pair or two might survive and propa- 

 gate their kind, their food consisting of what flies 

 they could capture, with the possibility at the last 

 of devouring one another. Finally, I have in- 

 cluded the butterfly in this class, not because I 

 succeeded in catching and examining it, but on the 

 chance that, like the moth and the ant, it might 

 possibly be a gravid female. 



Class III — Creatures doomed for the present 

 to mere existence on the island — frigatebird, Gala- 



