like the maiden among Comus’s companions. We disturbed them rudely, and then went in pursuit of a bandicoot that was swimming to an unwonted roost — poor wretch! — in a citron tree. A little bird was sitting on a bush, scratching its head, its day’s work over, and thinking of nothing in particular; but a hawk that had had no dinner came by, and gave it something to think about. A pariah dog had a litter upon a patch of tiles, all that remained of a house-roof, and we rescued the starveling brute. A rat floated by in a sieve: another was cruising more dryly in a gourd. Look at that squirrel! The imposture is out. So long as he had the firm earth to fall back upon, he lived bravely enough in the trees; but now that he has only the trees, he is starving. The “tree squirrel” forsooth! But was there no Isis or Osiris, no Apis of the “awful front,” nor dog-headed Anubis to tell it that the floods were coming? In Egypt some one tells the crocodiles every year how high the Nile will rise; for let the sourceless river rise never so much, the great suarian’s eggs are always found above the reach of the highest wave. But the squirrel without the ground is better off than a grasshopper without grass to hop in: it is then a poor thing indeed. One hopped into our boat — a desperate leap for life — such as egg-seekers take at the dangling rope on St. Kilda’s face. I remember reading in Bacon that “the vigor of the grasshopper consists only in their voices.” That they can make a noise out of all proportion to their size is true, but it seems to me that Bacon cast undeservedly a slur upon the “gaers toop.” The particular grasshopper in point may have been a cripple, but, as a rule, the insect has a shrewd way of hopping that makes me think respectfully of his hind legs, and
