THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



By day I had seen water-snakes putting up their 

 heads and swimming about. There were great 

 numbers of others, which had made little spoors 

 all over the plains in search of the fishes, among 

 the tall grass of these flooded prairies; curious 

 birds, too, jerked and wriggled among these 

 reedy masses, and we heard human-like voices and 

 unearthly sounds, with splash, guggle, jupp, as if 

 rare fun were going on in their uncouth haunts. 

 At one time, something came near us, making a 

 splashing like that of a canoe or hippopotamus : 

 thinking it to be the Makololo, we got up, lis- 

 tened, and shouted ; then discharged a gun several 

 times, but the noise continued without intermis- 

 sion for an hour."* 



If the sounds of night possess a romantic inter- 

 est for the naturalist, so do those animal flames 

 with which it is illuminated,— 



"Stars of the earth, and diamonds of the night," 



Mr. Kirby, the most accomplished of entomolo- 

 gists, speaks in rapturous terms of our own 

 homely little glow-worm. "If," says he, "living, 

 like me, in a district where it is rarely met with, 

 the first time you saw this insect chanced to be, 

 as it was in my case, one of those delightful even- 

 ings which an English summer seldom yields, 

 when not a breeze disturbs the balmy air, and 

 'every sense is joy,' and hundreds of these radiant 

 worms, studding their mossy couch with wild 

 effulgence, were presented to your wondering eye 

 in the course of a quarter of a mile, — you could 

 not help associating with the name of glow-worm 

 the most pleasing recollections, "t 



It is, however, in America that these "diamonds 

 of the night" are observed to advantage. In 



* Livingstone's "Africa," p. 167. 

 + "Introduction to Entomology." Letter xxv. 

 40 



