26 
an inedible beast of some kind. I turned to see where the animal 
was. The native pointed at myself. I could see nothing, but he 
approached, and pointing to a wisp of hay which had fallen upon 
my coat, repeated ‘Cherombo.’ Believing that it must be some 
insect among the hay, I took it in my fingers, looked over it, and 
told him pointedly there was no cherombo there. He smiled, and 
pointing again to the hay, exclaimed ‘ Moio’’—‘ it’s alive.’ The 
hay itself was the cherombo! I do not exaggerate when I say that 
wisp of hay was no more like an insect than my aneroid barometer. 
Take two inches of dried yellow grass-stalk, such as one might 
take to run through the stem of a pipe; then take six other pieces 
as long and a quarter as thick; bend each in the middle at any 
angle you like, stick them in three opposite pairs, and again at any 
angle you like upon the first grass-stalk, and you have my 
Cherombo.”” The members of this family have a marvellous power 
of shamming death, and having once assumed any position, they 
never vary one of the angles by so much as half a degree. 
Then again there are insects like a walking twig, covered 
apparently with bark and spotted all over with mould, others which 
aye modelled after the form of mosses, lichen, and fungi; or the 
still more elaborate leaf insects of the Mantis tribe, some of which 
resemble shrivelled leaves, and others are coloured a vivid green on 
their wing cases which are marked like a leaf with veins and mid 
rib, and have expansions along the thorax, and all the limbs to 
imitate smaller leaves. 
Time warns me that I must only allude in passing to other 
instances of this world wide and marvellous law of nature, such as 
the tawny colour of those creatures which inhabit the desert, the 
vertical stripes of the tiger which mimic the reeds of his native 
jungle, the brilliant greens of tropical birds and insects, the dusky 
colour of night haunting creatures, the gorgeous tints of the fishes 
around the coral reefs, or the sand-like colour of those which live 
at the bottom of the sea. . 
In these and the previous examples I have quoted, the grand 
idea in Nature seems to be economy, ‘“‘ economy of nerve and 
muscle, of instinct and energy, secured by passivity rather than 
activity.” There is no need for a creature protectively shaped and 
coloured, to seek safety by flight—it has simply to be still, so that 
here again we see the beneficence of the universal law of natural 
selection. We are fortunately no longer afraid of acknowledging 
this law, and it has been, and should be one of the main objects of 
this and kindred societies, to encourage liberality of ideas, and 
faith in the truthful teachings of nature, and to sweep aside the 
bigotted notion that there is anything incompatible in the truths of 
religion and the truths of science. 
