uently make of it a kind of
house pet. When that is done, the reptile often makes its home in the
cottage thatch, living on birds and mice. They are dull and sluggish in
motion. While visiting a sugar plantation a few years ago one of the hands
asked if I should be interested by their _maja_. He dipped his hand into a
nearby water-barrel in the bottom of which two of them were closely coiled.
He dragged out one of perhaps ten or twelve feet in length and four or five
inches in diameter, handling it as he would the same length of hawser. He
hung it over the limb of a tree so that I could have a good chance for
a picture of it. The thing squirmed slowly to the ground and crawled
sluggishly away to the place from which it had been taken. Of bird-life
there is a large representation, both native and migratory. Among them
are some fifty species of "waders." In some parts of the island, the very
unpleasant land-crab, about the size of a soup-plate, seems to exist in
millions, although thousands is probably nearer the actual. The American
soldiers made their acquaintance in large numbers at the time of the
Santiago campaign. They are not a proper article of food. They have a
salt-water relative that is most excellent eating, as is also the lobster
_(langosta)_ of Cuban waters. In the swamp known as the Cienega de Zapata
are both alligators and crocodiles, some of them of quite imposing
dimensions.

[Illustration: ROYAL PALMS]

The insect life of the island is extensive. From personal experience,
particularly behind the search-light of an automobile that drew them
in swarms, I, should say that the island would be a rich field for the
entomologist. There are mosquitos, gnats, beetles, moths, butterflies,
spiders, and scorpions. The bites of some of the spiders and the stings of
the scorpions are, of course, uncomfortable, but they are neither fatal nor
dangerous. With the exception of an occasional mosquito, and a perhaps more
than occasional flea, the visitor to cities only is likely to encounter
few of the members of these branches of Cuban zoology. There is one of
the beetle family, however, that is extremely interesting. That is
the _cucullo_, which Mr. Hazard, in his book on Cuba, calls a "bright
peripatetic candle-bearer, by whose brilliant light one can not only walk,
but even read." They are really a kind of glorified firefly, much larger
than ours, and with a much more brilliant light. I do not know their
candle-power,