90 
NATURAL HISTORY JOTTINGS IN NATAL. APRIL, 1892. 
them packed on the top of one another in a jumbled mass as 
close as they could get. I can give no reason for this peculiar 
habit, and as far as I know it is unexplained. 
Stepping from stone to stone along the bed of this stream, 
one feels that—although the overhanging trees break the 
fierce heat of the sun overhead—the heat is still strong 
enough to make one wish for a bathe in the cool water, that 
trickles in and out and around the boulders washed out by 
its own untiring action, and then flows into a deep still 
pool to flow out again in a rippling stream that falls and 
breaks from step to step in hundreds of tiny cascades. 
It would not be very wise to yield to this desire, as, apart 
from the dead thorny branches that have fallen from above, 
it is in these pools that the dirty-coloured fresh-water crab is 
on the lookout for something to nip. To see this pretty 
little brook, so small that at times it almost loses itself among 
the stones and rank grass where only its ripple betrays it, one 
would think it could never be worthy to be called a river; 
but see it when the summer rains fall, and the water pours 
down from the hills around like a great moving wall that 
carries all before it, and covers the very boulders around which 
it used to meander. Where it would have been easy to 
step across it, it would now be impossible to ford. All our 
rivers are alike ; and in one place our railway crosses a 
bridge quite four hundred yards long, beneath which in the 
winter time runs a stream not a dozen yards across, 
which in the wet season is a wide rushing river. In a steep 
gully, worn by the water’s years of work, is a fall where the 
beautiful maiden-hair fern peeps from among the rocks, over 
which the water bounds, but leaving a passage where one 
may walk with the steep rocky wall on the one side and the 
flashing water on the other ; and beneath these rocks a large 
moth finds a resting place during the hours of sunshine. 
I have caught many of them, but have never succeeded in 
obtaining a perfect specimen, owing, no doubt, to their being 
so large and clumsy. 
Attracted by the lamplight, several kinds of Hawk-moths 
come flying into the house at night, and among them is the 
“Death’s-head.” Beetles, moths, flies, and “flying ants” 
come trooping in, and on a damp evening they become quite 
a nuisance. These “flying ants” are the males and females 
of the so-called “ white ants,” of which we have any quantity, 
as you may find by lifting up any piece of board or plank that 
has been lying on the ground for a short time, when they are 
seen hurrying hither and thither in great consternation at being 
disturbed. They do much damage to houses in some parts of 
the town, especially in those built on the ridge of hills behind 
