Hamlet Clark's Letters Home 169 



indeed of all orders. I always made a point of visiting this tree ; it was mani- 

 festly a well-known luncheon-room for all insects whose morning duties led them 

 into that part of the forest : they kept coming in from all quarters and going away 

 in all directions : the big butterflies were fussy and unneighbourly, running up 

 and down in the sunshine and disturbing all around them ; the beetles, though 

 lively enough on occasion, were more demure, and sedulously attended to the 

 main object of their visit. The Ichneumons are unpopular among the insect 

 tribes, everj'body gives one of them a wide berth, and interchange of civilities 

 as between butterflies are of the curtest ; one big black steel-coloured gentle- 

 man is so obnoxious that as soon as he alights every one in that neighbourhood 

 departs. What a vast deal there is for us to learn ! these creatures, I suppose, 

 have their traditions, or if not traditions (by these I mean of course the natural 

 tendencies that they derive from their parents) their own personal experiences. 

 I know that they were right about those Ichneumons, perfectly right ; but how 

 do they know it ? How do those little creatures know that the steel-coloured 

 Ichneumon would as soon have a luncheon off them as off the gum, perhaps 

 prefer them ! or indeed that he, in his experience of life, visits this tree in the 

 full expectation of being able to get a wholesome meal off one or two flies ? or 

 do they know it at all ? and why, when they cannot endure the shadow of a 

 carnivorous wasp, will they permit, without difficulty, the blundering swing of 

 the antennae of a Trachyderes right across their bodies, or let a big Papilio 

 almost walk over them ? There is a degree of discrimination in all these actions 

 that is quite superior to the instinct of, we will say, a Chlamys, which, on the 

 approach of danger makes itself in an instant exactly like a bit of caterpillar's 

 dung ! That is inexplicable enough, but that is simple and uniform : the rule 

 of life among the Chlamydese is, " If ever you are in the least frightened roll 

 yourself up as tightly as you can : " it is their misfortune or their good fortune 

 that the result is that the sight of them would turn the stomach of any respect- 

 able bird on the hunt for food. To this nile there is no exception ; a hannless 

 butterfly accidently touching them would metamorphose them into an unpleasant- 

 looking cylinder just as soon as the touch of my very dangerous finger and 

 thumb. But here on this gummy tree, the rendezvous of insects, you find some- 

 thing very superior to this. There is a discriminating power which is always 

 exercised aright, and which seems very much like the result of memory and of 

 experience : certainly the absence of any such discriminating power might be in 

 a moment fatal, putting an end to all experiences : it is the quick-witted who 

 live, it is the dullards who are food for Ichneumons ; although whence they 

 got their wits I can tell as little as I can tell why the old hen-partridge makes 

 her brood cower down in the stubble at the sight of a distant hawk while she 

 cares nothing at all for fifty crows or gulls : all that is evident is that such 

 knowledge has been imparted to them by the Creator." p. 155. 



We see similar instinctive antipathies in every branch of the 

 animal kingdom. Every one knows how the voice of the Hon 

 makes all the beasts of the forest tremble and fly. Gardener, in 

 his travels in Brazil, remarked: — 



"My horses, which were feeding at a little distance, came closer to us when 

 they heard the almost unearthly sounds produced by the fierce inhabitant of the 

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