The last evening, as if to make our departure still harder, the insects increased in number. Walking sticks five and six inches in length skimmed through the air, their bodies, legs and wings dark in color and ornamented with irregular scales and projections, until their resemblance to a jagged-barked twig was perfection. If this species were represented by thousands of individuals in its haunts, birds or four-footed enemies would soon learn to detect even such an exact counterfeit, and the protective value would be lost. But in the tropics the infinite variety is the key-note to success in protective adaptation. On the table-cloth at one time would be perfect green leaves (katydid-like orthopters), green leaves with large worm-eaten defects or spottings (some of the mantises) and many brown, lichened leaves and twigs (moths and walking sticks). Even if two of the same species appeared at once, the chances were that one would be much the larger and of an entirely different shade with a distinct individual pattern of mimic defects. Big owl moths (_Hyperchiria liberia_, _H. nausica_, _Automeria cinctistriga_ and others) alternated with tree-hoppers of all sizes with branched and rebranched horns rising from their thoraxes (_Hemiptycha [Umbonia] spinosa_ and others). The prize of one evening was a grasshopper (_Pterochroya ocellata_) which came in on the sleeve of the coolie butler. It had alighted on the white cloth as he crossed the yard between the kitchen and the house. Its wide, jagged fore-wings met closely above the back, forming a half green, half brown leaf, complete even to the mid and side ribs. On the hind wings were what we could merely guess were either sexual ornaments or warning markings, visible only in flight. The ground color of these translucent wings was a finely mottled yellow and brown, while painted on the pleated surface were two eye-spots like those upon the feathers of a Peacock-pheasant, a dark velvety shaded portion with a delicately shaded ocellus at one edge. The last insect captured was a tree-hopper as big as a cicada, mottled and marbled on the fore-wings, and stained scarlet on the hinder. In Appendix C, pages 397, 398, I have added a list of a few of the moths and Orthoptera collected on the dining table at Hoorie, which have been identified. CHAPTER VII. THROUGH THE COASTAL WILDERNESS WITH INDIANS AND CANOE. The most interesting observation we made on the launch trip from Hoorie Creek down the Barama River, was of a flocking of more than two hundred big green Cassiques[150] the birds of the liquid cow-bell notes, which passed low overhead with a roar of cackling voices, and a loud whistling of wings, bound for some safe roosting place—still another species to exhibit this common roosting habit.