The number that can be procured from a single tree, depends altogether upon the season in which it is wounded. If the moon is at her full, they are generally numerous and good--many thousands being found in an ordinary young tree of 25 feet in height. If a few succeed in eluding the gatherer, they do so only to become a prey of as voracious animals, for the wild hogs, or _quencos_, of the forest relish much the soft substance of the palmiste when in a state of decomposition. It never happens, therefore, that much time passes before they discover any palmiste-tree that has been felled; and as soon as night sets in, they flock in numbers to the spot and devour the whole substance. A gathering of worms, therefore, brings a hunt of quencos; and the gatherer, when his first business is over, chooses a convenient tree, where he places himself in ambush. Seated on a cross branch, he awaits the coming of the animals. It is difficult to form an idea of the peculiar excitement of this midnight sport in the thick woods of a tropical country. The usual stillness of the night, and the solitude of the wilderness--the croaking of the night-birds, the movement of every leaf, animated as it is by the myriads of nocturnal insects that fill the atmosphere--the brilliant and fleeting fire-flies traversing the gloom--the strange animals wandering in their nightly prowlings--the approach of the grunting hogs, and the incidents of the hunt: all these things, combined with the idea of isolation when a man finds himself alone in the wilds of a scarcely pervious forest, create an inexpressible feeling of mingled fear, pleasure, and anxiety. Before the worms are cooked, they are, each in its turn, carefully pricked with an orange-thorn, and thrown into a vessel containing a sauce of lime-juice and salt. This is for the purpose of cleansing them from the viscid fluids they may have imbibed from the palmiste. Notwithstanding this discipline, the worms retain their vitality till they are deprived of it by the culinary process. The simpler mode of dressing them is to spit a number together on a piece of stick or a long orange-thorn, and roast them before the fire in their own fat. The general mode, however, is by frying them with or without a sauce, and when dressed in this manner, they form a most savoury dish. Groogroo worms are considered great delicacies in some parts of the West Indies, chiefly in those whose inhabitants are of French or Spanish origin. The good old planter at his table presents you with a dish of worms, with as much pride as an epicure in England introduces you to cod-sounds, eels, or high venison. Nor does it appear that there is any peculiarity in the taste of those who relish the insects; because it very frequently happens, that the stranger, who manifested on his arrival the greatest disgust at the idea of eating worms, becomes immediately converted into an extravagant lover of them.