enemy gave him a fit of the shivers; and when the
irascible little enemy began to advance against us,
going through the performance by means of which he
generally puts his foes to flight without resorting
to malodorous measures—stamping his little
feet in rage, jumping up, spluttering and hissing
and flourishing his brush like a warlike banner above
his head—then hardly could I restrain my
dog from turning tail and flying home in abject terror.
My cruel persistence was rewarded at last. Continued
shouts, cheers, and hand-clappings began to stir the
brute to a kind of frenzy. Torn by conflicting
emotions, he began to revolve about the skunk at a
lumbering gallop, barking, howling, and bristling
up his hair; and at last, shutting his eyes, and with
a yell of desperation, he charged. I fully expected
to see the enemy torn to pieces in a few seconds,
but when the dog was still four or five feet from
him the fatal discharge came, and he dropped down as
if shot dead. For some time he lay on the earth
perfectly motionless, watched and gently bedewed by
the victorious skunk; then he got up and crept whining
away. Gradually he quickened his pace, finally
breaking into a frantic run. In vain I followed
him, shouting at the top of my lungs; he stayed not
to listen, and very speedily vanished from sight—a
white speck on the vast level plain. At noon
on the following day he made his appearance, gaunt
and befouled with mud, staggering forward like a galvanized
skeleton. Too worn out even to eat, he flung himself
down, and for hours lay like a dead thing, sleeping
off the effects of those few drops of perfume.
Dogs, I concluded, like men, have their idiosyncrasies;
but I had gained my point, and proved once more—if
any proof were needed—the truth of that
noble panegyric of Bacon’s on our faithful servant
and companion.
MIMICRY AND WARNING COLOURS IN GRASSHOPPERS.
There is in La Plata a large handsome grasshopper
(Zoniopoda tarsata), the habits of which in its larva
and imago stages are in strange contrast, like those
in certain lepidoptera, in which the caterpillars
form societies and act in concert. The adult has
a greenish protective colouring, brown and green banded
thighs, bright red hind wings, seen only during flight.
It is solitary and excessively shy in its habits,
living always in concealment among the dense foliage
near the surface of the ground. The yonng are
intensely black, like grasshoppers cut out of jet
or ebony, and gregarious in habit, living in bands
of forty or fifty to three or four hundred; and so
little shy, that they may sometimes be taken up by
handfuls before they begin to scatter in alarm.
Their gregarious habits and blackness—of
all hues in nature the most obvious to the sight—would
alone be enough to make them the most conspicuous of
insects; but they have still other habits which appear
as if specially designed to bring them more prominently
into notice. Thus, they all keep so close together
at all times as to have their bodies actually touching,
and when travelling, move so slowly that the laziest
snail might easily overtake and pass one of their
bands, and even disappear beyond their limited horizon
in a very short time.
