ADVENTURES BY THE WAY 



"There is a dik-dik; a bush is big enough to climb 

 for him." 



"Are you afraid of jackals, too?" 



The fireflies were our regular evening companions. 

 We caught one or two of them for the pleasure of 

 watching them alternately igniting and extinguishing 

 their little lamps. Even when we put them in a 

 bottle they still kept up their performance bravely. 



But beside them we had an immense variety of 

 evening visitors. Beetles of the most inconceivable 

 shapes and colours, all sorts of moths, and number- 

 less strange things leaf insects, walking-stick insects, 

 exactly like dry twigs, and the fierce, tall, praying 

 mantis with their mock air of meekness and devotion. 

 Let one of the other insects stray within reach and 

 their piety was quickly enough abandoned! One 

 beetle about three eighths of an inch across was 

 oblong in shape and of pure glittering gold. His 

 wing covers, on the other hand, were round and 

 transparent. The effect was of a jewel under a 

 tiny glass case. Other beetles were of red dotted 

 with black, or of black dotted with red ; they sported 

 stripes, or circles of plain colours; they wore long 

 slender antennae, or short knobby horns; they car- 

 ried rapiers or pinchers, long legs or short. In fact 

 they ran the gamut of grace and horror, so that 



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