236 



belated Curlew or line of Egrets ma^^ pass, and later 

 still a flock of Duck or Spur-wing Geese may be seen 

 streaming across the face of the rising moon. 



Long before this, however, bird-life has given 

 place to the insect-host, the merciless tyrants of the 

 tropic night; on every side they swarm, fireflies float- 

 ing lightly amid the foliage like lost and wandering 

 starlets, thousands of flying beetles, bronze or black or 

 metallic green, some as small as ladybirds, others a 

 hundred times as big, ugl}^ as sin and as noi.sy as an 

 underground train, earwigs, crickets, and foul squashy 

 things which look like winged caterpillars, while a 

 ceaseless accompaniment of shrill "music" — the 

 prototype, one feels sure, of the feeble native zithers 

 or their other stringed instruments — is provided by the 

 restful sleep-inducing " susurrus " or the cicadas, and 

 by the very opposite of this, the maddening, rest- 

 dispelling hum of the mosquito-hosts. The night 

 indeed is no time for bird or au}^ other study ; it takes 

 one, then, all one's time to exist, and under a stufi"y 

 net in a still stuffier cabin to grapple with larger beasts, 

 which have somehow got inside, and then to tr}^ to 

 avoid listening to the constant buzzing of the culex 

 and anopheles, to take no notice of the ferocious 

 attacks of the pulex and perhaps even more noisome 

 crawlers and get some attempt at sleep. 



