BERNI FLIES 141 



assailed, although they were now and then cutting the 

 trail. Colonel Rondon and I were in the middle of the 

 column, and the swarm attacked us ; both of us were 

 badly stung on the face, neck, and hands, the Colonel 

 even more severely than I was. He wheeled and rode 

 to the rear and I to the front ; our horses were stung 

 too ; and we went at a rate that a moment previously 

 I would have deemed impossible over such ground. 



At the close of the day, when we were almost back 

 at the river, the dogs killed a jaguar kitten. There was 

 no trace of the mother. Some accident must have 

 befallen her, and the kitten was trying to shift for her- 

 self. She was very emaciated. In her stomach were 

 the remains of a pigeon and some tendons from the 

 skeleton or dried carcass of some big animal. The 

 loathsome berni flies, which deposit eggs in living 

 beings — cattle, dogs, monkeys, rodents, men — had been 

 at it. There were seven huge, white grubs making big 

 abscess-like swellings over its eyes. These flies deposit 

 their grubs in men. In 1909, on Colonel Rondon's hardest 

 trip, every man of the party had from one to five grubs 

 deposited in him, th e fly actin g with great speed, and 

 driving its ovipositor through clothing. The grubs 

 cause torture ; but a couple of cross cuts with a lancet 

 permit the loathsome creatures to be squeezed out. 



In these forests the multitude of insects that bite, 

 sting, devour, and prey upon other creatures, often with 

 accompaniments of atrocious suffering, passes belief. 

 The very pathetic myth of " beneficent nature " could 

 not deceive even the least wise being if he once saw for 

 himself the iron cruelty of life in the tropics. Of course 

 " nature " — in common parlance a wholly inaccurate 

 term, by the way, especially when used as if to express 

 a single entity — is entirely ruthless, no less so as regards 



