366 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 



and whose sole food was this Solanum. Their 

 feeding-times were the dusk of evening and morn- 

 ing, when they would arise, as it were, out of the 

 earth, hover over the plants like a swarm of bees, 

 and then settle down in such numbers that the 

 plants were black with them. 



For myself, I am free to confess that I, too, 

 generally looked on the insect world as enemies to 

 be avoided or destroyed. Mosquitoes and ticks 

 sucked my blood ; cockroaches ate and defiled my 

 provisions ; caterpillars mutilated the plants when 

 growing ; and ants made their nests among the 

 dried specimens and saturated them with formic 

 acid, or even cut them up and carried them away 

 bodily. I recollect my horror at coming home and 

 finding my house invaded by an army of Arriero 

 or Saiiba ants who had fallen on a pile of dried 

 specimens and were cutting them up most scientific- 

 ally into circular disks whose radius was just equal 

 to the artist's own longest diameter. The few notes 

 on insects scattered through my journals relate, 

 indeed, chiefly to ants, who deserve to be considered 

 the actual owners of the Amazon valley far more 

 than either the red or the white man. In fine, when 

 I venture to offer these imperfect jottings to the 

 notice of zoologists, I feel that I can at best be con- 

 sidered only an interloper in a province not my own. 



SOME CASES OF INSECT MIGRATION 



Having above indicated the kinds of plants 

 apparently most in request with the larvae of the 

 Lepidoptera, I wish now to recall the attention of 



