36 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 



scene is brought back to him. Three bees and a 

 fly winging their way past, with the rise and fall 

 of their varied hums, were sufficient to renew 

 vividly for me the blackness of night over the 

 sticky mud of Souville, and to cloud for a mo- 

 ment the scent of clover and dying grass, with 

 that terrible sickly sweet odor of human flesh in 

 an old shell-hole. In such unexpected ways do 

 we link peace and war — suspending the greatest 

 weights of memory, imagination, and visualiza- 

 tion on the slenderest cobwebs of sound, odor, 

 and color. 



But again my bees became but bees — great, 

 jolly, busy yellow-and-black fellows, who blun- 

 dered about and squeezed into blossoms many 

 sizes too small for them. Cicadas tuned up, 

 clearing their drum-heads, tightening their keys, 

 and at last rousing into the full swing of their 

 ecstatic theme. And my relaxed, uncritical mind 

 at present recorded no difference between the 

 sound and that which was vibrated from northern 

 maples. The tamest bird about me was a big 

 yellow-breasted white-throated flycatcher, and I 

 had seen this Melancholy Tyrant, as his technical 

 name describes him, in such distant lands that he 

 fitted into the picture without effort. 



