he first stridulation
of ancient insects. To-day the fiddling vibrations, the Song of the
Beetle, reached out in all directions. To the majority of jungle ears
it was only another note in the day's chorus: I saw it attract a
flycatcher's attention, hold it a moment, and then lose it. To me it
came as a vitally interesting tone of deep significance, for whatever
emotions it might arouse in casual ears, its goal was another
Great-armed Beetle, who might or might not come within its radius.
With unquestioning search the fiddler clambered on and on, over me and
over flowers and rocks, skirting the ripples and vanishing into a
maelstrom of waving grass. Long after the last awkward lurch, there
came back zizzing squeaks of perfect faith, and I hoped, as I passed
beyond the periphery of sound, that instinct and desire might direct
their rolling ball of vibrations toward the one whose ear, whether in
antenna, or thorax or femoral tympanum had, through untold numbers of
past lives, been attuned to its rhythm.

Two thousand miles north of where I sat, or ten million, five hundred
and sixty thousand feet (for, like Bunker Bean's book-keeper, I
sometimes like to think of things that way), I would look out of the
window one morning in days to come, and thrill at the sight of falling
flakes. The emotion would very probably be sentiment--the memory of
wonderful northland snowstorms, of huge fires, of evenings with
Roosevelt, when discussions always led to unknowable fields, when book
after book yielded its phrase or sentence of pure gold thought. On one
of the last of such evenings I found a forgotten joy-of-battle-speech
of Huxley's, which stimulated two full days and four books
re-read--while flakes swirled and invisible winds came swiftly around
the eaves over the great trophies--_poussant des soupirs_,--we longing
with our whole souls for an hour of talk with that splendid old
fighting scientist.

These are thoughts which come at first-snow, thoughts humanly narrow
and personal compared to the later delights of snow itself--crystals
and tracks, the strangeness of freezing and the mystery of melting.
And they recurred now because for days past I had idly watched
scattered flurries of lemon-yellow and of orange butterflies drift
past Kartabo. Down the two great Guiana rivers they came, steadily
progressing, yet never hurrying; with zigzag flickering flight they
barely cleared the trees and shrubs, and then skimmed the surface,
va