HAMMOCK NIGHTS 219 
since there is not the vestige of a breeze; but 
faint odors arrive, become stronger, and die 
away, or are wholly dissipated by an onrush of 
others, so musky or so sweet that one can almost 
taste them. ‘These have their secret purposes, 
since Nature is not wasteful. If she creates 
beautiful things, it is to serve some ultimate end; 
it is her whim to walk in obscure paths, but her 
goal is fixed and immutable. However, her de- 
signs are hidden and not easy to decipher; at 
best, one achieves, not knowledge, but a few iso- 
lated facts. 
Sport in a hammock might, by the casual 
thinker, be considered as limited to dreams of the 
hunt and chase. Yet I have found at my dis- 
posal a score of amusements. When the dusk 
has just settled down, and the little bats fill every 
glade in the forest, a box of beetles or grasshop- 
pers—or even bits of chopped meat—offers the 
possibility of a new and neglected sport, in effect 
the inversion of baiting a school of fish. Toss a 
grasshopper into the air and he has only time to 
spread his wings for a parachute to earth, when 
a bat swoops past so quickly that the eyes refuse 
to see any single effort—but the grasshopper has 
vanished. As for the piece of meat, it is drawn 
