20 
HABANA 
CHAP. 
acclimatised to the bite it does not affect them. The 
ticks in me were first covered with kerosene and then 
taken out with pincers, but I felt the bites for many 
days afterwards. 
Another most insinuating creature is the little thin 
needle -like land leech ; he very soon makes himself 
acquainted with you in the long lank grass or in 
shady places. I couldn’t imagine at first what was 
wrong with my legs, but I soon discovered that 
their bite makes a most irritating sore. They move 
along by semicircular strides with bodies poised ready 
to lay hold at a moment’s notice, and they are 
particularly energetic and familiar after a shower of 
rain. As for spiders, their name is legion ; but I am 
partial to them, as you know, and think they are more 
sinned against than sinning; a good-sized one will 
clear the room of an amazing number of flies. 
Caterpillars are the things my soul abhors. In some 
of the gum trees they form a great, black, crawling, 
creeping ball, wriggling and twisting round each other 
in such numbers that they cannot any longer sustain 
their own weight, and come flopping on to the ground, 
still never leaving go their hold of each other. Some 
of the beetles are really fiendish -looking, others of 
dazzling beauty. Here, too, you find a great variety 
of leaf insects, marvels of hypocrisy. It is almost 
impossible to believe that they really do possess legs, 
and even these are so like stems that it is only 
when you touch them that you realise the imitation. 
Yesterday I caught the largest stick insect that 
I have yet seen. He is a much more modest 
creature, and generally hides in out-of-the-way places, 
avoiding anything like publicity. 
I have already painted one or two very large 
Praying Mantis, but the finest specimen, a large green 
