26 



an inedible beast of some kind. I turned to see where the animal 

 was. The native pointed at myself. I could see nothing, but he 

 approached, and pointing to a wisp of hay which had fallen upon 

 my coat, repeated ' Cherombo.' Believing that it must be some 

 insect among the hay, I took it in my fingers, looked over it, and 

 told him pointedly there was no cherombo there. He smiled, and 

 pointing again to the hay, exclaimed ' Moio " — ' it's alive.' The 

 hay itself was the cherombo ! I do not exaggerate when I say that 

 wisp of hay was no more like an insect than my aneroid barometer. 

 Take two inches of dried yellow grass-stalk, such as one might 

 take to run through the stem of a pipe ; then take six other pieces 

 as long and a quarter as thick ; bend each in the middle at any 

 angle you like, stick them in three opposite pairs, and again at any 

 angle you like upon the first grass-stalk, and you have my 

 Cherombo." The members of this family have a marvellous power 

 of shamming death, and having once assumed any position, they 

 never vary one of the angles by so much as half a degree. 



Then again there are insects like a walking twig, covered 

 apparently with bark and spotted all over with mould, others which 

 are modelled after the form of mosses, lichen, and fungi ; or the 

 still more elaborate leaf insects of the Mantis tribe, some of which 

 resemble shrivelled leaves, and others are coloured a vivid green on 

 their wing cases which are marked like a leaf with veins and mid 

 rib, and have expansions along the thorax, and all the limbs to 

 imitate smaller leaves. 



Time warns me that I must only allude in passing to other 

 instances of this world wide and marvellous law of nature, such as 

 the tawny colour of those creatures which inhabit the desert, the 

 vertical stripes of the tiger which mimic the reeds of his native 

 jungle, the brilliant greens of tropical birds and insects, the dusky 

 colour of night haunting creatures, the gorgeous tints of the fishes 

 around the coral reefs, or the sand-like colour of those which live 

 at the bottom of the sea. 



In these and the previous examples I have quoted, the grand 

 idea in Nature seems to be economy, " economy of nerve and 

 muscle, of instinct and energy, secured by passivity rather than 

 activity." There is no need for a creature protectively shaped and 

 coloured, to seek safety by fl.ight — it has simply to be stiU, so that 

 here again we see the beneficence of the universal law of natural 

 selection. We are fortunately no longer afraid of acknowledging 

 this law, and it has been, and should be one of the main objects of 

 this and kindred societies, to encourage liberality of ideas, and 

 faith in the truthful teachings of nature, and to sweep aside the 

 bigotted notion that there is anything incompatible in the truths of 

 religion and the truths of science. 



