With regard to the insects themselves, so rapidly did they increase that every week or so handfuls had to be taken away and kept apart from the shrubs, when they died—yet thousands never got near because of the thousands intervening, to which they clung. It was an interesting instance of symbiosis, and virtue in some shape or form must have been transmitted through the intervening bodies, or possibly by means of some delicate sense of smell. Neither Godfrey nor any other of the great biologists of the time have ever been able to throw any additional light on the matter, though not unparallel cases have been known in certain of those islands on Earth, of highly volcanic origin, formerly called the Fiji, or Viti Islands, which were a British dependency. These islands were famed for the tropical luxuriance of their vegetable and insect life, but were submerged in the South Pacific by the great tidal wave closely following the devastating eruption and earthquake of 2316 +a.d.+, which permanently raised that portion of the South Pacific Ocean. CHAPTER XIV BETWEEN TWO WORLDS “For thousand perils lie in close await That none except a god, or God him guide, May them avoid, or remedy provide.” (+Spenser.+) There were no inhabitants anywhere in sight, and the general appearance of the landscape was flat, the country stretching away in beautiful rolls of heath, broken only by the small, stunted trees and shrubs on which were seen the millions and millions of strange insects, their shining bodies causing the landscape to look as if covered with corn golden to harvest, and shaking with vivid green dewdrops. After roaming about for several miles, disturbing these insects at every step, at each further step to find that those last disturbed had settled down again, the wanderers returned to the ship, most of them weary with the monotony.