214 JUNGLE PEACE 



not escape. Resignedly he had settled on the 

 very line of traffic of the deadly foe, after in- 

 trenching himself and summoning to his aid all 

 the defenses with which nature had endowed 

 him. And he was winning out — the first ver- 

 tebrate I have ever known to withstand the army 

 ants. For a few minutes he would be ignored 

 and his sides would vibrate as he breathed with 

 feverish rapidity. Then two or three ants would 

 run toward him, play upon him with their an- 

 tennae, and examine him suspiciously. During 

 this time he was immovable. Even when a sol- 

 dier sank his mandibles deep into the roughened 

 skin and wrenched viciously, the toad never 

 moved. He might have been a parti-colored 

 pebble embedded in its matrix of sand. Once, 

 when three bit him simultaneously, he winced, 

 and the whitish, acrid juice oozed from his pores. 

 Usually the ants were content with merely ex- 

 amining him. I left him when I saw that he 

 was in no immediate danger. 



One other creature was quiescent in the pit 

 and yet lived: a big, brown, hardbacked milU- 

 pede. Like the frog, he fully realized his dan- 

 ger and had sunk his bulk partly into the sand, 

 bending down head and tail and presenting only 



