How heavenly tropical life would be, in a beautiful country like that, but for those infernal insects! The mosquito, for instance,—and he is an angel, compared to some of those Beelzebubs,—must have made Adam swear at Eve, even before the fall. And then those awful spiders, whose hair tickles a man to madness, even if he survives the horror of seeing such devils. And then the tampan—but let us drop the subject, please, for fear of not sleeping to–night. Cradock awoke in furious pain, and spasms most unphilosophical. He had dreamed that he was playing football upon Cowley Green, and had kicked out nobly with his right foot into a marching line of red ants. Immediately they swarmed upon him, up him, over him, into him, biting with wild virulence, and twisting their heads and nippers round in every wound to exasperate it. Wena was rolling and yelling, for they attacked her too. Cradock thought they would kill him; although he did not know that even the python succumbs to them. He was as red all over, inside his clothes and outside, as if you had winnowed over him a bushel of fine rouge. Dancing, and stamping, and recalling, with heartfelt satisfaction, some strong words learned at Oxford, he caught up Wena, and away they went, two solid lumps of ants, headlong into the sea. Luckily he had not far to go; he lay down and rolled himself, clothes and all, and rolled poor Wena too in the waves, until he had the intense delight of knowing that he had drowned a million of them. Ah! and just now he had made up his mind to respect every form of life so. Oh, but I defy any fellow, even the sage Archbishop who reads novels to stop other people, to have lectured us under the circumstances, or to have kept his oaths in, with those twenty thousand holes in him. The salt water went into Cradockʼs holes, and made him feel like a Cayenne peppercastor; and the little dog sat in the froth of the sea, and thought that even dogs are allowed a hell. After that there was nothing to do, except to go home mournfully—if a tree may be called a home, as no doubt it deserves to be—and then to dry the clothes, and wish that the wearer knew something of botany. Cradock had no doubt at all that around him grew whole stacks of leaves which would salve and soothe his desperate pain; but he had not the least idea which were balm and which were poison. How he wished that, instead of reading so hard for the scholarship of Dean Ireland, he had kept his eyes open in the New Forest, and learned just Natureʼs rudiments! Of course he would have other leaves to deal with; but certain main laws and principles hold good all the world over. Bob Garnet would have been quite at home, though he had never seen one of those plants before.