Whenever I touched a leaf the ant upon it ran about as if to frighten an intruder away, and I could not help but wonder if in China, where the wood-oil tree is at home, there might not be some stinging ant which takes upon itself to protect the foliage from the attacks of caterpillars, and gets, in payment for its labor, the nectar from these glands. The tropics are full of such agreements between the plants and the ants, and very effective ones they are, too. The photograph shows a black ant with antennæ extended, reaching over one of these big glands for the drop of nectar which glistens just below its head. On the other gland, just back of the ant's left antenna, a second drop of nectar can be seen. First one and then the other of these nectaries is licked clean by the ant, and so well was the work done that throughout the summer it was only when I visited the leaves in early morning, before the ants were out, that I could find the beads of nectar in their places in slight depressions in the glands. [Illustration] THE ICHNEUMON FLY: ENEMY OF THE SPIDER (_Crypturopsis sp._) It would seem as though the spider ought to be able to protect itself from such a beautiful creature as this, but she is said to be one of the spider's worst enemies. With the long ovipositors which may be seen in the photograph and might almost be mistaken for her sting, she lays her eggs inside those of the spider and the larvæ hatching from them eat up the spider's eggs. It is, so to say, an insect cuckoo, or worse than that, for the bird cuckoo only crowds the real children out of the nest, whereas the ichneumon fly devours them. From man's point of view, however, many of the tribe to which this so-called fly belongs are his good friends, for they hold in check some of the pests which molest the plants he lives upon. CHAPTER III THE WORLD OF MYRIAPODS AND A SINGLE LAND CRUSTACEAN THE WORLD OF MYRIAPODS AND A LAND CRUSTACEAN Every one who has turned over a rotten log has seen these thousand-legged worms, and yet I wonder if many of us have known that these weird wandering things resemble, and are the direct living descendants of some of the first animals which crept up out of the sea to live upon the land. Long ages before the warm-blooded, lung-breathing beasts came into existence, they worked their way up out of their water life among the corals, sponges, worms, shellfish, and fishes, onto the dry land. This was in the great transition time when all sorts of amphibian monsters came into existence, monsters which have long since passed away. These myriapods deserve respect if for no other reason than because their forefathers crept across the fresh footprints and mud wallows of the prehistoric monsters. How comes it that these forms of life have changed so little in a million years? [Illustration] A MILLIPEDE, ONE OF THE VEGETARIAN MYRIAPODS