their sap quicken at the warmth of fifteen hundred springs. Somewhere
between these extremes, we open our eyes, look about us for a time and
close them again. Modern political geography and shifts of government
give us Methusalistic feelings--but a glance at rocks or stars sends
us shuddering among the other motes which glisten for a moment in the
sunlight and then vanish.
We who strive for a little insight into evolution and the meaning of
things as they are, forever long for a glimpse of things as they were.
Here at my laboratory I wonder what the land was like before the dense
mat of vegetation came to cover every rock and grain of sand, or how
the rivers looked when first their waters trickled to the sea.
All our stories are of the middles of things,--without beginning or
end; we scientists are plunged suddenly upon a cosmos in the full
uproar of eons of precedent, unable to look ahead, while to look
backward we must look down.
Exactly a year ago I spent two hours in a clearing in the jungle back
of Kartabo laboratory, and let my eyes and ears have full swing.[2]
Now in August of the succeeding year I came again to this clearing,
and found it no more a clearing. Indeed so changed was it, that for
weeks I had passed close by without a thought of the jungle meadow of
the previous year, and now, what finally turned me aside from my usual
trail, was a sound. Twelve months ago I wrote, "From the monotone of
under-world sounds a strange little rasping detached itself, a
reiterated, subdued scraping or picking. It carried my mind instantly
to the throbbing theme of the Niebelungs, onomatopoetic of the little
hammers forever busy in their underground work. I circled a small bush
at my side, and found that the sound came from one of the branches
near the top; so with my glasses I began a systematic search." This
was as far as I ever got, for a flock of parrakeets exploded close at
hand and blew the lesser sound out of mind. If I had stopped to guess
I would probably have considered the author a longicorn beetle or some
fiddling orthopter.
[Footnote 2: See page 34.]
Now, a year later, I suddenly stopped twenty yards away, for at the
end of the silvery cadence of a woodhewer, I heard the low, measured,
toneless rhythm which instantly revived to mind every detail of the
clearing. I was headed toward a distant palm frond beneath whose tip
was a nest of Rufous Hermits, for I wished to see the two atoms of
hummingbirds at the moment when they rolled from their _petit pois_
egg-shells. I gave this up for the day and turned up the hill, where
fifty feet away was the stump and bush near which I had sat and
watched. Three times I went past the place before I could be certain,
and even at the last I identified it only by the relative position of
the giant tauroneero tree, in which I had shot many cotingas. The
stump was there, a bit lower and more worn at the crevices, leaking
sawdust like an overloved doll--but the low shrub had become a tall
sapling, the weeds--vervain, boneset, velvet-leaf--all had been topped
and killed off by dense-foliaged bushes and shrubs, which a year
before had not raised a leaf above the meadow level. The old vistas
were gone, the landscape had closed in, the wilderness was shutting
down. Nature herself was "letting in the jungle." I felt like Rip Van
Winkle, or even more alien, as if the passing of time had been
accelerated and my longed-for leap had been accomplished, beyond the
usual ken of mankind's earthly lease of senses.
All these astounding changes had come to pass through the heat and
moisture of a tropical year, and under deliberate scientific
calculation there was nothing unusual in the alteration. I remembered
the remarkable growth of one of the laboratory bamboo shoots during
the rainy season--twelve and a half feet in sixteen days, but that was
a single stem like a blade of grass, whereas here the whole landscape
was altered--new birds, new insects, branches, foliage, flowers, where
twelve short months past, was open sky above low weeds.
In the hollow root on the beach, my band of crane-flies had danced for
a thousand hours, but here was a sound which had apparently never
ceased for more than a year--perhaps five thousand hours of daylight.
It was a low, penetrating, abruptly reiterated beat, occurring about
once every second and a half, and distinctly audible a hundred feet
away. The "low bush" from which it proceeded last year, was now a
respectable sapling, and the source far out of reach overhead. I
discovered a roundish mass among the leaves, and the first stroke of
the ax sent the rhythm up to once a second, but did not alter the
timbre. A few blows and the small trunk gave way and I fled for my
life. But there was no angry buzzing and I came close. After a
cessation of ten or fifteen seconds the sound began again, weaker but
steady. The foliage was alive with small Azteca ants, but these were
tenants of several small nests near by, and at the catastrophe overran
everything.
The largest structure was the smooth carton nest of a wasp, a
beautiful species, pale yellowish-red with wine-colored wings. Only
once did an individual make an attempt to sting and even when my head
was within six inches, the wasps rested quietly on the broken combs.
By careful watching, I observed that many of the insects jerked the
abdomen sharply downward, butting the comb or shell of smooth paper a
forceful blow, and producing a very distinct noise. I could not at
first see the mass of wasps which were giving forth the major rhythm,
as they were hidden deep in the nest, but the fifty-odd wasps in
sight kept perfect time, or occasionally an individual skipped one or
two beats, coming in regularly on every alternate or every third beat.
Where they were two or three deep, the uppermost wasps struck the
insects below them with their abdomens in perfect rhythm with the nest
beat. For half an hour the sound continued, then died down and was not
heard again. The wasps dispersed during the night and the nest was
deserted.
It reminded me of the telegraphing ants which I have often heard in
Borneo, a remarkable sweeping roll, caused by the host of insects
striking the leaves with their heads, and produced only when they are
disturbed. It appeared to be of the nature of a warning signal, giving
me opportunity to back away from the stinging legions which filled the
thicket against which I pushed.
The rhythm of these wasps was very different. They were peaceable, not
even resenting the devastation of their home, but always and always
must the inexplicable beat, beat, beat, be kept up, serving some
purpose quite hidden from me. During succeeding months I found two
more nests, with similar fetish of sound vibrations, which led to
their discovery. From one small nest, which fairly shook with the
strength of their beats, I extracted a single wasp and placed him in a
glass-topped, metal box. For three minutes he kept up the rhythmic
beat. Then I began a more rapid tattoo on the bottom of the box, and
the changed tempo confused him, so that he stopped at once, and would
not tap again.
A few little Mazaruni daisies survived here and there, blossoming
bravely, trying to believe that the shade was lessening, and not daily
becoming more dense. But their leaves were losing heart, and paling in
the scant light. Another six months and dead leaves and moss would
have obliterated them, and the zone of brilliant flowers and gorgeous
butterflies and birds would shift many feet into the air, with the
tops of the trees as a new level.
As long as I remained by my stump my visitors were of the jungle. A
yellow-bellied trogon came quite close, and sat as trogons do, very
straight and stiff like a poorly mounted bird, watching passing
flycatchers and me and the glimpses of sky. At first he rolled his
little cuckoo-like notes, and his brown mate swooped up, saw me,
shifted a few feet farther off and perched full of curiosity, craning
her neck and looking first with one eye, then the other. Now the male
began a content song. With all possible variations of his few and
simple tones, on a low and very sweet timbre, he belied his unoscine
perch in the tree of bird life, and sang to himself. Now and then he
was drowned out by the shrilling of cicadas, but it was a delightful
serenade, and he seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. A few days
before, I had made a careful study of the syrinx of this bird, whom we
may call rather euphoniously _Trogonurus curucui_, and had been struck
by the simplicity both of muscles and bones. Now, having summoned his
mate in regular accents, there followed this unexpected whisper song.
It recalled similar melodies sung by pheasants and Himalayan
partridges, usually after they had gone to roost.
Once the female swooped after an insect, and in the midst of one of
the sweetest passages of the male trogon, a green grasshopper shifted
his position. He was only two inches away from the singer, and all
this time had been hidden by his chlorophyll-hued veil. And now the
trogon fairly fell off the branch, seizing the insect almost before
the tone died away. Swallowing it with considerable difficulty, the
harmony was taken up again, a bit throaty for a few notes. Then the
pair talked together in the usual trogon fashion, and the sudden
shadow of a passing vulture, drew forth discordant cat calls, as both
birds swooped from sight to avoid the fancied hawk.
A few minutes later the vocal seal of the jungle was uttered by a
quadrille bird. When the notes of this wren are heard, I can never
imagine open, blazing sunshine, or unobstructed blue sky. Like the
call of the wood pewee, the wren's radiates coolness and shadowy
quiet. No matter how tropic or breathless the jungle, when the
flute-like notes arise they bring a feeling of freshness, they arouse
a mental breeze, which cools one's thoughts, and, although there may
be no water for miles, yet we can fairly hear the drip of cool drops
falling from thick moss to pools below. First an octave of two notes
of purest silver, then a varying strain of eight or ten notes, so
sweet and powerful, so individual and meaningful that it might stand
for some wonderful motif in a great opera. I shut my eyes, and I was
deaf to all other sounds while the wren sang. And as it dwelt on the
last note of its phrase, a cicada took it up on the exact tone, and
blended the two final notes into a slow vibration, beginning gently
and rising with the crescendo of which only an insect, and especially
a cicada, is master. Here was the eternal, hypnotic tom-tom rhythm of
the East, grafted upon supreme Western opera. For a time my changed
clearing became merely a sounding box for the most thrilling of jungle
songs. I called the wren as well as I could, and he came nearer and
nearer. The music rang out only a few yards away. Then he became
suspicious, and after that each phrase was prefaced by typical wren
scolding. He could not help but voice his emotions, and the harsh
notes told plainly what he thought of my poor imitation. Then another
feeling would dominate, and out of the maelstrom of harshness, of
tumbled, volcanic vocalization would rise the pure silver stream of
single notes.
The wren slipped away through the masses of fragrant Davilla blossoms,
but his songs remained and are with me to this moment. And now I
leaned back, lost my balance, and grasping the old stump for support,
loosened a big piece of soft, mealy wood. In the hollow beneath, I
saw a rainbow in the heart of the dead tree.
This rainbow was caused by a bug, and when we stop to think of it,
this shows how little there is in a name. For when we say bug, or for
that matter bogy or bugbear, we are garbling the sound which our very,
very forefathers uttered when they saw a specter or hobgoblin. They
said it _bugge_ or even _bwg_, but then they were more afraid of
specters in those days than we, who imprison will-o'-the-wisps in Very
lights, and rub fox-fire on our watch faces. At any rate here was a
bug who seemed to ill-deserve his name, although if the Niblelungs
could fashion the Rheingold, why could not a bug conceive a rainbow?
Whenever a human, and especially a house-human thinks of bugs, she
thinks unpleasantly and in superlatives. And it chances that
evolution, or natural selection, or life's mechanism, or fate or a
creator, has wrought them into form and function also in superlatives.
Cicadas are supreme in longevity and noise. One of our northern
species sucks in silent darkness for seventeen years, and then, for a
single summer, breaks all American long-distance records for insect
voices. To another group, known as Fulgorids, gigantic heads and
streamers of wax have been allotted. Those possessing the former
rejoice in the name of Lantern Flies, but they are at present
unfaithful vestal bugs, though it is extremely doubtful if their wicks
were ever trimmed or lighted. To see a big wax bug flying with
trailing ribbons slowly from tree to tree in the jungle is to recall
the streaming trains of a flock of peacocks on the wing.
The membracids must of all deserve the name of "bugges" for no elf or
hobgoblin was ever more bizarre. Their legs and heads and bodies are
small and aphid-like, but aloft there spring minarets and handles and
towers and thorns and groups of hairy balls, out of all reason and
sense. Only Stegosaurus and Triceratops bear comparison. Another group
of five-sided bugs are the skunks and civet-cats among insects,
guarding themselves from danger by an aura of obnoxious scent.
Not the least strange of this assemblage is the author of our rainbow
in the stump. My awkwardness had broken into a hollow which opened to
the light on the other side of the rotten bole. A vine had tendriled
its way into the crevice where the little weaver of rainbows had
found board and lodging. We may call him toad-hopper or spittle-bug,
or as Fabre says, "_Contentons-nous de Cicadelle, qui respecte le
tympan._" Like all of its kindred, the Bubble Bug finds Nirvana in a
sappy green stem. It has neither strong flight, nor sticky wax, thorny
armature nor gas barrage, so it proceeds to fashion an armor of
bubbles, a cuirass of liquid film. This, in brief, was the rainbow
which caught my eye when I broke open the stump. Up to that moment no
rainbow had existed, only a little light sifting through from the
vine-clad side. But now a ray of sun shattered itself on the pile of
bubbles, and sprayed itself out into a curved glory.
Bubble Bugs blow their froth only when immature, and their bodies are
a distillery or home-brew of sorts. No matter what the color, or
viscosity or chemical properties of sap, regardless of whether it
flows in liana, shrub, or vine, yet the Bug's artesian product is
clear, tasteless and wholly without the possibility of being blown
into bubbles. When a large drop has collected, the tip of the abdomen
encloses a retort of air, inserts this in the drop and forces it out.
In some way an imponderable amount of oil or dissolved wax is
extruded and mixed with the drop, an invisible shellac which toughens
the bubble and gives it an astounding glutinous endurance. As long as
the abdominal air-pump can be extended into the atmosphere, so long
does the pile of bubbles grow until the insect is deep buried, and to
penetrate this is as unpleasant an achievement for small marauders as
to force a cobweb entanglement. I have draped a big pile of bubbles
around the beak of an insect-eating bird, and watched it shake its
head and wipe its beak in evident disgust at the clinging oily films.
In the north we have the bits of fine white foam which we
characteristically call frog-spittle, but these tropic relatives have
bigger bellows and their covering is like the interfering mass of
films which emerges from the soap-bubble bowl when a pipe is thrust
beneath the surface and that delicious gurgling sound produced.
The most marvelous part of the whole thing is that the undistilled
well which the Bubble Bug taps would often overwhelm it in an instant,
either by the burning acidity of its composition, or the rubber
coating of death into which it hardens in the air. Yet with this
current of lava or vitriol, our Bug does three wonderful things, it
distills sweet water for its present protective cell of bubbles, it
draws purest nourishment for continual energy to run its bellows and
pump, and simultaneously it fills its blood and tissues with a pungent
flavor, which in the future will be a safeguard against the attacks of
birds and lizards. Little by little its wings swell to full spread and
strength, muscles are fashioned in its hind legs, which in time will
shoot it through great distances of space, and pigment of the most
brilliant yellow and black forms on its wing covers. When at last it
shuts down its little still and creeps forth through the filmy veil,
it is immature no longer, but a brilliant frog-hopper, sitting on the
most conspicuous leaves, trusting by pigmental warning to advertise
its inedibility, and watchful for a mate, so that the future may hold
no dearth of Bubble Bugs.
On my first tramp each season in the tropical jungle, I see the
legionary army ants hastening on their way to battle, and the
leaf-cutters plodding along, with chlorophyll hods over their
shoulders, exactly as they did last year, and the year preceding, and
probably a hundred thousand years before that. The Colony Egos of
army and leaf-cutters may quite reasonably be classified according to
Kingdom. The former, with carnivorous, voracious, nervous, vitally
active members, seems an intangible, animal-like organism; while the
stolid, vegetarian, unemotional, weather-swung Attas, resemble the
flowing sap of the food on which they subsist--vegetable.
Yet, whatever the simile, the net of unconscious precedent is too
closely drawn, the mesh of instinct is too fine to hope for any
initiative. This was manifested by the most significant and
spectacular occurrence I have ever observed in the world of insects.
One year and a half ago I studied and reported upon, a nest of Ecitons
or army ants.[3] Now, eighteen months later, apparently the same army
appeared and made a similar nest of their own bodies, in the identical
spot near the door of the outhouse, where I had found them before.
Again we had to break up the temporary colony, and killed about
three-quarters of the colony with various deadly chemicals.
[Footnote 3: See page 58.]
In spite of all the tremendous slaughter, the Ecitons, in late
afternoon, raided a small colony of Wasps-of-the-Painted-Nest. These
little chaps construct a round, sub-leaf carton-home, as large as a
golf ball, which carries out all the requirements of counter shading
and of ruptive markings. The flattened, shadowed under surface was
white, and most of the sloping walls dark brown, down which extended
eight white lines, following the veins of the leaf overhead. The side
close to the stem of the leaf, and consequently always in deep shadow,
was pure white. The eaves catching high lights were black. All this
marvelous merging with leaf tones went for naught when once an advance
Eciton scout located the nest.
As the deadly mob approached, the wasplets themselves seemed to
realize the futility of offering battle, and the entire colony of
forty-four gathered in a forlorn group on a neighboring leaf, while
their little castle was rifled--larvæ and pupæ torn from their cells
and rushed down the stems to the chaos which was raging in Eciton's
own home. The wasps could guard against optical discovery, but the
blind Ecitons had senses which transcended vision, if not even scent.
Late that night, our lanterns showed the remnants of the Eciton army
wandering aimlessly about, making near approach impossible, but
apparently lacking any definite concerted action.
At six o'clock the following morning I started out for a swim, when at
the foot of the laboratory steps I saw a swiftly-moving, broad line of
army ants on safari, passing through the compound to the beach. I
traced them back under the servants' quarters, through two clumps of
bamboos to the outhouse. Later I followed along the column down to the
river sand, through a dense mass of underbrush, through a hollow log,
up the bank, back through light jungle--to the outhouse again, and on
a large fallen log, a few feet beyond the spot where their nest had
been, the ends of the circle _actually came together_! It was the most
astonishing thing, and I had to verify it again and again before I
could believe the evidence of my eyes. It was a strong column, six
lines wide in many places, and the ants fully believed that they were
on their way to a new home, for most were carrying eggs or larvæ,
although many had food, including the larvæ of the Painted Nest
Wasplets. For an hour at noon during heavy rain, the column weakened
and almost disappeared, but when the sun returned, the lines rejoined,
and the revolution of the vicious circle continued.
There were several places which made excellent points of observation,
and here we watched and marveled. Careful measurement of the great
circle showed a circumference of twelve hundred feet. We timed the
laden Ecitons and found that they averaged two to two and
three-quarter inches a second. So a given individual would complete
the round in about two hours and a half. Many guests were plodding
along with the ants, mostly staphylinids of which we secured five
species, a brown histerid beetle, a tiny chalcid, and several Phorid
flies, one of which was winged.
The fat Histerid beetle was most amusing, getting out of breath every
few feet, and abruptly stopping to rest, turning around in its tracks,
standing almost on its head, and allowing the swarm of ants to run up
over it and jump off. Then on it would go again, keeping up the
terrific speed of two and a half inches a second for another yard. Its
color was identical with the Ecitons' armor, and when it folded up,
nothing could harm it. Once a worker stopped and antennæd it
suspiciously, but aside from this, it was accepted as one of the line
of marchers. Along the same route came the tiny Phorid flies, wingless
but swift as shadows, rushing from side to side, over ants, leaves,
débris, impatient only at the slowness of the army.
All the afternoon the insane circle revolved; at midnight the hosts
were still moving, the second morning many had weakened and dropped
their burdens, and the general pace had very appreciably slackened.
But still the blind grip of instinct held them. On, on, on they must
go! Always before in their nomadic life there had been a goal--a
sanctuary of hollow tree, snug heart of bamboos--surely this terrible
grind must end somehow. In this crisis, even the Spirit of the Army
was helpless. Along the normal paths of Eciton life he could inspire
endless enthusiasm, illimitable energy, but here his material units
were bound upon the wheel of their perfection of instinct. Through sun
and cloud, day and night, hour after hour there was found no Eciton
with individual initiative enough to turn aside an ant's breadth from
the circle which he had traversed perhaps fifteen times: the masters
of the jungle had become their own mental prey.
Fewer and fewer now came along the well worn path; burdens littered
the line of march, like the arms and accoutrements thrown down by a
retreating army. At last a scanty single line struggled past--tired,
hopeless, bewildered, idiotic and thoughtless to the last. Then some
half dead Eciton straggled from the circle along the beach, and threw
the line behind him into confusion. The desperation of total
exhaustion had accomplished what necessity and opportunity and normal
life could not. Several others followed his scent instead of that
leading back toward the outhouse, and as an amoeba gradually flows
into one of its own pseudopodia, so the forlorn hope of the great
Eciton army passed slowly down the beach and on into the jungle. Would
they die singly and in bewildered groups, or would the remnant draw
together, and again guided by the super-mind of its Mentor lay the
foundation of another army, and again come to nest in my outhouse?