All the afternoon the insane circle revolved; at midnight the hosts were still moving, the second morning many had weakened and dropped their burdens, and the general pace had very appreciably slackened. But still the blind grip of instinct held them. On, on, on they must go! Always before in their nomadic life there had been a goal--a sanctuary of hollow tree, snug heart of bamboos--surely this terrible grind must end somehow. In this crisis, even the Spirit of the Army was helpless. Along the normal paths of Eciton life he could inspire endless enthusiasm, illimitable energy, but here his material units were bound upon the wheel of their perfection of instinct. Through sun and cloud, day and night, hour after hour there was found no Eciton with individual initiative enough to turn aside an ant's breadth from the circle which he had traversed perhaps fifteen times: the masters of the jungle had become their own mental prey. Fewer and fewer now came along the well worn path; burdens littered the line of march, like the arms and accoutrements thrown down by a retreating army. At last a scanty single line struggled past--tired, hopeless, bewildered, idiotic and thoughtless to the last. Then some half dead Eciton straggled from the circle along the beach, and threw the line behind him into confusion. The desperation of total exhaustion had accomplished what necessity and opportunity and normal life could not. Several others followed his scent instead of that leading back toward the outhouse, and as an amoeba gradually flows into one of its own pseudopodia, so the forlorn hope of the great Eciton army passed slowly down the beach and on into the jungle. Would they die singly and in bewildered groups, or would the remnant draw together, and again guided by the super-mind of its Mentor lay the foundation of another army, and again come to nest in my outhouse? Thus was the ending still unfinished, the finale buried in the future--and in this we find the fascination of Nature and of Science. Who can be bored for a moment in the short existence vouchsafed us here; with dramatic beginnings barely hidden in the dust, with the excitement of every moment of the present, and with all of cosmic possibility lying just concealed in the future, whether of Betelgeuze, of Amoeba or--of ourselves? _Vogue la galère!_ APPENDIX OF SCIENTIFIC NAMES Page Line 4 26 Moriche Oriole; _Icterus chrysocephalus_ (Linné) 8 10 Toad; _Bufo guttatus Schneid_. 18 3 Bat; _Furipterus horrens_ (F. Cuv.) 4 Large Bats; _Vampyrus spectrum_ (Linné) 6 Vampire Bats; _Desmodus rotundus_ (Geoff.) 22 5 Giant Catfish, Boom-boom; _Doras granulosus_ Valen. 23 5 Kiskadee; _Pitangus s. sulphuratus_ (Linné) 25 26 Parrakeets; _Touit batavica_ (Bodd.) 26 Great Black Orioles; _Ostinops d. decumanus_ (Pall.) 26 5 House Wrens; _Troglodytes musculus clarus_ Berl. and Hart 29 5 Coati-mundi; _Nasua n. nasua_ (Linné)