In vain I followed him, shouting at the top of my lungs; he stayed
not to listen, and very speedily vanished from sight--a white speck on
the vast level plain. At noon on the following day he made his
appearance, gaunt and befouled with mud, staggering forward like a
galvanized skeleton. Too worn out even to eat, he flung himself down,
and for hours lay like a dead thing, sleeping off the effects of those
few drops of perfume.
Dogs, I concluded, like men, have their idiosyncrasies; but I had gained
my point, and proved once more--if any proof were needed--the truth of
that noble panegyric of Bacon's on our faithful servant and companion.
CHAPTER VIII.
MIMICRY AND WARNING COLOURS IN GRASSHOPPERS.
There is in La Plata a large handsome grasshopper (Zoniopoda tarsata),
the habits of which in its larva and imago stages are in strange
contrast, like those in certain lepidoptera, in which the caterpillars
form societies and act in concert. The adult has a greenish protective
colouring, brown and green banded thighs, bright red hind wings, seen
only during flight. It is solitary and excessively shy in its habits,
living always in concealment among the dense foliage near the surface of
the ground. The yonng are intensely black, like grasshoppers cut out of
jet or ebony, and gregarious in habit, living in bands of forty or fifty
to three or four hundred; and so little shy, that they may sometimes be
taken up by handfuls before they begin to scatter in alarm.
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