Part 10 (2/2)
These latter are a strange tropical family four hundred strong, and all the very essence of protective coloring. Their habits of life make of them wandering bits of bark, easy to detect when they are in motion, but vanis.h.i.+ng utterly when they are quiet. Their similarity in dress is remarkable. They may be large or small, short or long-tailed, with beaks blunt, sharp, straight, curved, thick, or needle-pointed. In these characters they differ; by these points they must know one another. But their colors are almost identical. Their olives or browns invariably warm into rich foxy rufous on wings and tail, while over head and shoulders a shower of light streaks has fallen, bits of sunlight fixed in down.
Further details belong to the literature of ornithology. But the colors of the berry-hunters--these baffle description, yet we cannot pa.s.s them by in silence. The blood and orange splashed on black of the toucans, the scarlet and yellow of woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, the soft greens and buffs of flycatchers, all these paled when a flock of manakins or tanagers or honey-creepers came to the tree. Every precious stone found its counterpart in the metallic hues of these exquisite feathered folk.
The glory of all was the opal-crowned manakin, a midget in green coat and sulphur waistcoat, with a cap of scaly, iridescent, silvery mother-of-pearl plates, in no way akin to feathers. Until now the life of this Hop o' my Thumb, like those of all his ancestors, had gone smoothly on, with never a human to admire, to wonder, and vainly to echo the question of the great black frog, _Wh--y?_
On the last day of my stay I walked slowly up the trail toward the _canella do matto_. For the last time I strained upward at the well-known branches, and with the very movement there came the voice of the swamp. Its tone was insistent, with a tinge of accusation, a note of censure. _Wh--y?_ and after a little time, _Wh--y?_
I looked about me despairingly. What had I learned after all? Was there any clearing up of the mystery of the jungle? Had my week of scrutiny brought me any closer to the real intimacies of evolution? Or--evading these questions for the time--was there nothing I could do in the few precious moments left?
In five minutes I should turn my back on all this wildness, this jungle seething with profound truths, and great solutions within arm's reach. I should pa.s.s to the ocean where monotony compels introspection, and finally to the great center of civilization where the veneer covers up all truths.
Even if my studies had taught only the lesson of the tremendous insurgence of life, could I not emphasize this, make it a more compelling factor to be considered in future efforts toward the frog's question and mine?
My eyes left the foliage overhead and sought the ground. Acting on impulse, I brought from my camping stores an empty war-bag, and sc.r.a.ped together an armful of leaves, sticks, moss, earth, mold of all sorts.
Four square feet of jungle debris went into my bag, and I shouldered it.
Then I said adieu to my trail and my tree--a sorrowful leave-taking, as is always my misfortune. For the bonds which bind me to a place or a person are not easily broken. And, as usual when the trail pa.s.sed from view, the ideal alone remained. The thoughts of mosquitoes, of drenchings, of hours of breathless disappointed waiting, all sank in the memory of the daily discoveries, the mental delights of new research.
A week later, when the sky-line was unbroken by land, when a long ground-swell waved but did not disturb the deep blue of the open sea, I unlaced my bag of jungle mold. Armed with forceps, lens, and vials I began my search. For days I had gazed upward; now my scrutiny was directed downward. With binoculars I had scanned without ceasing the myriad leaves of a great tree; now with lens or naked eye I sought for life or motion on single fallen leaves and dead twigs. When I studied the life of the great tree I was in the land of Brobdingnag; now I was verily a Gulliver in Lilliput. The cosmos in my war-bag teemed with mystery as deep and as inviting as any in the jungle itself.
When I began work I knew little of what I should find. My vague thoughts visualized ants and worms, and especially I antic.i.p.ated unearthing myriads of the unpleasant ”mucuims” or _betes rouges_, whose hosts had done all in their power to make life in the jungle unhappy.
Day by day my vials increased. Scores of creatures evaded my search; many others, of whose kind I had captured a generous number, I allowed to escape.
My lilliputian census was far from the mere aggregation of ants and worms which I had antic.i.p.ated, and a review of the whole showed that hardly any great group of living creatures was unrepresented.
As hinting of the presence of wild animals, a bunch of rufous hairs had in some way been tweaked from a pa.s.sing agouti. Man himself was represented in the shape of two wads which had dropped from my gun-shots some time during the week. One had already begun to disintegrate and sheltered half a dozen diminutive creatures. Five feathers were the indications of birds, two of which were brilliant green plumes from a calliste. Of reptiles there was a broken skull of some lizard, long since dead, and the eggsh.e.l.l of a lizardling which had hatched and gone forth upon his mission into the jungle. A third reptilian trace may have been his nemesis--a bit of shed snake-skin. The group of amphibians was present even in this square of four feet--a very tiny, dried, black, and wholly unrecognizable little frog. Fishes were absent, though from my knees as I sc.r.a.ped up the debris, I could almost have seen a little igarape in which dwelt scores of minnows.
As I delved deeper and examined the mold more carefully for the diminutive inhabitants, I found that this thin film from the floor of the jungle appeared to have several layers, each with its particular fauna. The upper layer was composed of recently fallen leaves, nuts, seeds, and twigs, dry and quite fresh. Here were colonies of small ants and huge, solitary ones; here lived in hiding small moths and beetles and bugs, awaiting dusk to fly forth through the jungle. The middle layer was by far the most important, and in it lived four fifths of all the small folk. The lowest layer was one of matted roots and clayey soil and its animal life was meager.
Between the upper and the middle strata were sprouting nuts and seeds, with their blanched roots threaded downward into the rich dark mold, and the greening cotyledons curling upward toward light and warmth. Thus had the great bird-filled canella begun its life. In my war-bag were a score of potential forest giants doomed to death in the salt ocean. But for my efforts toward the _Wh--y_, their fate might have been very different.
Some of the half-decayed leaves were very beautiful. Vistas of pale, bleached fungus lace trailed over the rich mahogany-colored tissues, studded here and there with bits of glistening, transparent quartz. Here I had many hints of a world of life beyond the power of the unaided eye.
And here too the grosser fauna scrambled, hopped, or wriggled.
Everywhere were tiny chrysalides and coc.o.o.ns, many empty. Now and then a plaque of eggs, almost microscopic, showed veriest pin-p.r.i.c.ks where still more minute parasites had made their escape. When one contracted the field of vision to this world where leaves were fields and fungi loomed as forests, compet.i.tion, the tragedies, the mystery lessened not at all. Minute seeds mimicked small beetles in shape and in exquisite tracery of patterns. Bits of bark simulated insects, a patch of fungus seemed a worm, while the mites themselves were invisible until they moved. Here and there I discovered a lifeless boulder of emerald or turquoise--the metallic cuira.s.s of some long-dead beetle.
Some of the scenes which appeared as I picked over the mold, suddenly unfolding after an upheaval of debris, were like Aladdin's cave. Close to the eye appeared great logs and branches protruding in confusion from a heaped up bank of diamonds. Brown, yellow, orange, and white colors played over the scene; and now over a steep hill came a horrid, ungainly creature, with enormous proboscis, eight legs, and a s.h.i.+ning, liver-colored body, spotted with a sickly hue of yellow. It was studded with short, stiff, h.o.r.n.y hairs--a mite by name, but under the lens a terrible monster. I put some of these on my arm, to see if they were the notorious ”mucuims” which tortured us daily. Under the lens I saw the hideous creature stop in its awkward progress, and as it prepared to sink its proboscis I involuntarily flinched, so fearful a thing seemed about to happen.
The lesser organisms defy description. They are nameless except in the lists of specialists, and indeed most are of new, quite unnamed forms.
The only social insects were small twigfuls of ant and termite colonies, with from five to fifteen members. All others were isolated, scattered.
Life here, so far beneath the sunlight, is an individual thing. Flocks and herds are unknown; the mob has no place here. Each tiny organism must live its life and meet its fate single-handed.
Little pseudo-scorpions were very abundant, and I could have vialed hundreds. They rushed out excitedly and, unlike all the other little beings, did not seek to hide. Instead, when they were disturbed, they sought open s.p.a.ces, walking slowly and brandis.h.i.+ng and feeling ahead with their great pincer-tipped arms, as long as their entire body. When irritated or frightened, they scurried backwards, holding up their chelae in readiness.
Mites were the most abundant creatures, equaling the ants in number, always crawling slowly along, tumbling over every obstacle in their path and feeling their way awkwardly. Their kinds were numerous, all villainous in appearance. Ticks were less common but equally repellent.
Small spiders and beetles were occasionally found, and hundred-legged wrigglers fled to shelter at every turn of a leaf. The smallest snails in the world crawled slowly about, some flat-sh.e.l.led, others turreted.
Tiny earthworms, bright red and very active, crept slowly through fungus jungles until disturbed, when they became an amazingly active tangle of twisting curves, dancing all about. Simple insects, which we shall have to call collembolas, were difficult to capture. They leaped with agility many times their own length, and when quiescent looked like bits of fungus. As for the rest, only Adam and a few specialists hidden in museums could call them by name. They were a numerous company, some ornamented with weird horns and fringes and patterns, others long of legs or legless, swift of foot or curling up into minute b.a.l.l.s of animate matter.
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