88 
NATURAL HISTORY JOTTINGS IN NATAL. APRIL, 1892. 
One of our butterflies, also, has a great liking for what 
little twilight we get, and when darkness is fast coming 
on, two or three of them may often be seen hovering over 
the sweet-scented blossoms of the orange trees, and then 
darting away with lightning speed. 
Evening is the favourite time for the mosquitoes, the 
little pests that worry so many new-comers on their arrival 
here. It is no uncommon thing to see quite large swellings 
caused by their bites, but they affect some people far more 
than others, and I have been one of the lucky ones for whom 
they have apparently no liking. Their curious boats of eggs 
will be noticed floating on the water in the tanks, and I have 
found them in the water jug in my bed room, and in any 
stagnant water hundreds of their curious larvae or “ wiggle 
waggles ” may be seen squirming about. 
Except for a small “ whirligig ” beetle, a boatman and a 
water scorpion, I have seen no water insects ; but to make up 
for any loss in insect life, the flowers are plentiful near any 
stagnant water. On the marsh, where the dark green leaves 
and rich brown heads of the bulrush wave in the wind, the 
arum lily grows and blooms as it never does under culture. 
It is a lovely sight to see hundreds of their snowy, vase-like 
blossoms bending before the wind as it sweeps along and 
bears the crane from its feeding ground on the muddy flats to 
its home among the sedges, near the pools where the purple 
water lilies bloom and cast their fragrance around. 
During the winter months—when the rains cease, and the 
sun’s heat cools down to average English summer temperature 
—these pools dry up, and become mere clay beds for the impres¬ 
sions of the feet of the oxen, which come to seek for water in 
vain. With all this trampling, when summer’s torrents pour, 
and each hollow becomes a little lake, the purple water lily 
throws up its leaves in preparation for putting forth the buds 
that are soon to burst and open out as one of the loveliest of 
our flowers. Everything that has been so parched and dry 
as to impress one with a belief that all life has been burnt 
out of it, begins to put forth shoots and leaves, and to wear a 
mantle of bright green that seems to cool and refresh one 
after the months of vellow faded winter. 
4 ' 
For comfort our winter months are all that could be 
desired; but, for all its scorching days and steaming nights, 
varied with thunderstorms and falls of rain that last two and 
three days without cessation, I prefer the summer, as then 
everything seems to wake up both in the animal and vegetable 
world. 
Then the locusts or “ soldiers, ” with their many-coloured 
bodies, swarm in the vegetation on every roadside, and 
