IN THE ANTILLES. 
27 
is an intelligent fellow and an ardent collector of sea things, 
affects to despise jumbies — “ niggah nonsense, sah.” But even 
Matthew can hardly be prevailed upon to go out of doors after 
dark. He is then very tired, owing to the diving or the effects of 
the sun ; or there is a risk of fever, or a complaint of an actual at- 
tack. But for the noise of crickets and the like, there is an im- 
pressive silence in the great forest day and night. Now and then 
at night, however, we have heard (probably from some bird), an 
appalling scream that would curdle the blood of a grenadier. At 
such times Matthew feels a desire for society, and if awakened 
from sleep has a short conversation on indifferent topics. Not 
all the screams of all the jumbies, and their name is legion, are 
half so annoying as the crickets. One must live in such a 
place as this to understand how “ the grasshopper is a burden ” 
and a real one. Matthew told me the other night, during an 
exercise in “ part ” chirping, that they did it till they burst. At 
first I put this opinion down to the paternity of his wishes, but 
there proved to be a foundation for his remark. He showed me 
one of these “ burst ” crickets to prove his case, and an exami- 
nation of it disclosed the fact that it had been attacked by a 
fungus-disease like that which fills our common house flies with 
a white powdery mass of spores. These are scattered around 
it and give it the appearance of having exploded. 
The worst point about the animal kingdom here is that 
specimens come in search of one. Who can be alwa}'^s in the 
humour for collecting ? And then duplicates are the worst sort 
— they wake one up in “ the dead w'aste and middle of the night.” 
A brother naturalist, whose preparations for an expedition were 
inspired by the immortal Tartarin, took with him a copious 
supply of a certain “ insect powder,” and he didn’t write a 
testimonial to its powers when he returned. Animals that can 
bite you through an inverted sugar-boiler do not stop for trifles 
of that sort. Philanthropists now search among the hard con- 
ditions of life for the cause of brutality in civilised communities. 
Cannibalism is said, without much plausibility, to be caused by 
the absence of grazing animals, and I can quite believe that the 
bloodthirsty old Caribs of these parts were goaded into their 
atrocities by the presence of crickets and mosquitoes. Again, 
pirac}' reached its finest development here after the Caribs lost 
the whip hand, and after the pirates came the slave-dealers. 
The present one is a meek generation, and we are inheriting the 
earth ; but the old Adam breaks out in one now and then under 
stimulus of these causes. When Matthew says, “ I go burn a 
candle, sah,” meaning devotional exercises at the chapel near 
the rum shop six miles away, I used to think the methylated 
spirit was beginning to pall on his taste — but I believe in his 
devotions now, after hearing him curse the Invertebrata gener- 
ally the other night. Not an installation of the electric light 
would wipe away his stains. 
George ^^Iurray. 
