n 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