THE TROPICAL REGIONS. 133 



terrible legions. Give them a ship of the line — what do I say ? a 

 town — to devour, and they charge at it with eager joy. In course 

 of time they have excavated under Valentia, near Caraccas, vast 

 abysses and catacombs ; the city is now literally suspended. A few 

 individuals of this voracious tribe, unfortunately transported to 

 Rochelle, have set to work to eat up the place, and already more 

 than one edifice trembles upon timbers which are only externally 

 sound, and at the core are rotten. 



Wliat would be the fate of a man given up to the insects ? One 

 dares not think of it. An unfortunate wretch, while intoxicated, 

 fell down near a carcass. The insects which were devouring the 

 dead could not distinguish from it the living ; they took possession 

 of his body, entered at every avenue, filled all the natural cavities. 

 It was impossible to save him. He expired in the midst of frightful 

 convulsions. 



In those lands of fire, where the rapidity of decomposition renders 

 every corpse dangerous, where all death threatens life, these temble 

 accelerators of the disappearance of animal bodies multiply ad in- 

 finitum. A corpse scarcely touches the earth before it is seized, 

 attacked, disorganized, dissected. Only the bones are left. Nature, 

 endangered by her own fecundity, invites, stimulates, encourages 

 them by the heat, by the irritation of a world of spices and acrid 

 substances. She makes them furious hunters, insatiable gluttons. 

 The tiger and the lion, compared with the vulture, are mild, sober, 

 moderate creatures ; but what is the vulture in the presence of an 

 insect which, in four-and-twenty hours, consumes thrice its cwti 

 weight ? 



Greece personified nature under the calm and noble image of 

 Cybele chariot-drawn by lions. India dreams of her god Siva, the 

 divinity of life and death, who incessantly winks his eye, never 

 gazing fixedly, because his single glance would reduce all the worlds 

 to dust. How weak these fancies of men in the presence of the 

 reality ! Wliat avail their fictions before the burning centre where, 

 by atoms or by seconds, life dies, is born^ blazes, scintillates ? 



