136 JOURNAL OP THE TRINIDAD 



kin Is and once I saw one gorging a big centipede* which he stuffed 

 into his huge mouth with Ins front feet in a very clever though 

 clumsy fashion. No doubt scorpions often share the same 

 fate. Here I would like to mention two popular fallacies 

 with regard to these two arthropods. It is usually said that 

 the centipede sting-; and the scorpion bites. But the facts are 

 exactly the reverse. The centipedes bite with their mandibles 

 and the scorpion wounds with the sting at the end of the long 

 abdjmen. Jack Spaniards! are also said to bite, when they 

 only sting. Tree frogs and in fact all frogs are accused of 

 being venomous just as the toads are, on equally poor grounds. 

 Unfortunately the amphibians have one bad habit and that 

 is a practice of holding nightly concerts, but this is more than 

 mule up by the good they do us. Passing over the great army 

 of useful insects, without which, according to Mr. F. M. Webster, 

 " puny humanity would scarce be able to live out a miserable 

 existence" we come to earthworms. There are few things more 

 despised than they, an 1 they are accused of eating the roots 

 of plants. But Darwin tells us that in their burrowings they 

 plough the la id iu an excellent manner for seedlings and that 

 their value co agriculture cannot be estimated, so great is it. 



I have run on sj long thit I have not time to go into 

 details as to some animils which, while they are protected, 

 are really enemies of man and his labour, and I shall only be able 

 to mentiona few of them. First and foremost is the deer. J l'he poor 

 deer, the noble deer, the sobbing deer, with its grace- 

 ful delicate form, bounding footstep and large languishing eyes, 

 which dumbly implore pity. The deer is protected in most 

 countr'es and our deer are no exception to the rale. Why, it is 

 difficult to say, unless it be for the reasons above quoted. We 

 slay our rat-eating reptiles and birds, creatures which never 

 harmed a cocoa pod or sugxr cane, we shoot our wood peckers, 

 because they hunt out the insects which a.'e burrowing into the 

 bark of our fruit trees. We kill and persecute our geckos, lizards 

 and toads, because of their strange forms, regardless of the 

 incessant warfare they wage on insect pests. Bui the deer which 

 comes into our cocoa plantations eats up the buds, breaks the 

 young trees, rubs off the bark, is protected by Ordinance and 

 allowed a free run of our plantations and the man who thoots it 

 in the close season is liable to a fine for having done the country 

 a service in freeing it of one destructive animal. One other 

 instance is that of the butterfly, which adds so much to the 

 beauty of the landscape, but those who plead so vigorously 



* Scolopenira sp. 



t Vepsis sp. 



I Cariacus nemorivagiis. 



