1 32 THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



be that the spicy odour they disseminate corrects in some 

 imperceptible way the too sweet fragrance of the flowers. 

 Our tasty curry biscuits are flavoured with assafcetida ; why 

 may not our balmy breezes be seasoned with bug ? I once 

 thought they sought their own protection by creating a 

 poisonous atmosphere around them ; but last October I 

 found my little tame redstart eating up abomination 

 number one above-mentioned with great gusto. When I 

 say tame, I do not mean that the redstart is caged ; she is 

 a voluntary boarder and lodger with me, and spends her 

 mornings for the most part at my feet or under my chair, 

 quivering her tail as if she had ague, and picking up the 

 crumbs I drop for her benefit. That this dainty little crea- 

 ture, in her rusty brown dress and large black eyes, should 

 poke about corners in search of last evening's bugs, surely 

 illustrates the saying that there is no accounting for tastes. 

 To return to the possible utility of bugs, most of them live 

 on vegetable juices and bleed the trees, as the doctors used 

 to bleed us for our health in the last generation. Some, 

 however, are carnivorous, and impale caterpillars on their 

 needle-shaped beaks. It was one of these that brought 

 about the collapse of my Tusser-silk farm, when I started 

 that industry for the first and last time two years ago. It 



