me side was gone, Ayrault having landed a bullet on a spot
already stripped of armour. After this the men had no difficulty in
keeping out of its way, though it still moved with some speed, snipping
off young trees in its path like grass. Finally, having blown the
scales from one eye, the travellers sent in a bullet that exploded in
the brain and ended its career.

"This has been by all odds the most exciting hunt we have had," said
Ayrault, "both on account of the determined nature and great speed of
the attack, and the almost impossibility of finding a vulnerable spot."

"Anything short of explosive bullets," added Bearwarden, "would have
been powerless against this beast, for the armour in many places is
nearly a foot thick."

"This is also the most extraordinary as well as most dangerous creature
with which we have, had to deal," said Cortlandt, "because it is an
enormously enlarged insect, with all the inherent ferocity and
strength. It is almost the exact counterpart of an African soldier-ant
magnified many hundred thousand times. I wonder," he continued
thoughtfully, "if our latter-day insects may not be the deteriorated
(in point of size) descendants of the monsters of mythology and
geology, for nothing could be a more terrible or ferocious antagonist
than many of our well-known insects, if sufficiently enlarged. No
animal now alive has more than a small fraction of the strength, in
proportion to its size, of the minutest spider or flea. It may be that
through lack of food, difficulties imposed by changing climate, and the
necessity of burrowing in winter, or through some other conditions
changed from what they were accustomed to, their size has been reduced,
and that the fire-flies, huge as they seemed, are a step in advance of
this specimen in the march of deterioration or involution, which will
end by making them as insignificant as those on earth. These ants have
probably come into the woods to lay their eggs, for, from the behaviour
of the animals we watched from the turtle, there must have been
several; or perhaps a war is in progress between those of a different
colour, as on earth, in which case the woods may be full of them.
Doubtless the reason the turtle seemed so unconcerned at the general
uneasiness of the animals was because he knew he could make himself
invulnerable to the marauder by simply closing his shell, and we were
unmolested because it did not occur to the ant that any soft-shelle