178 KEW GARDENS 



boldt says, one can catch a faint stifled under- 

 tone, a buzz and hum of insects that crowd the 

 earth and the lowest strata of air, a confused 

 vibrating murmur, which from every bush, from 

 the cracked bark of trees, from the soil burrowed 

 by creeping things, proclaims life audibly manifest 

 to him who listens. But it is the evening, our 

 emblem of peace, the welcome twilight through 

 which the ploughboy goes whistling home, that 

 wakes tropical shades to an untuned concert of 

 croaking, screaming, chattering, wailing, howling, 

 and humming, when the darkness seems alive 

 with invisible cracklings, patterings, scratchings, 

 skippings and rustlings, silenced for the moment 

 by the blood-curdling growl and crashing spring 

 of some beast of prey, and the piercing death- 

 screech of its victim echoing far where every 

 foot of ground is scene for nightly tragedies. 

 One need be no Macbeth to have one's sleep 

 murdered by alarms and excursions for which 

 heated imagination acts as a megaphone. " The 

 clamour of the jackals over a carcass suggests 

 a band of hungry wolves. A mongoose having 

 it out with a rat beneath the floor is like an 

 animal Armageddon. Does your faithful dog 

 growl in the verandah, you make sure a leopard 



