Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/725

Rh dry weather the trees became denuded for a few days, or, in the case of the fiddlewood and silk cotton tree, several weeks. Those trees which never become quite bare dropped leaf after leaf until when the proper time came the young foliage pushed off the few leaves that remained and took their place.

Now comes the rain. The heat has been more oppressive than usual, and the sun is often obscured by thick clouds. Distant thunder is heard, and to the west and south the black clouds are lowering. Now and again great splashes of rain fall suddenly and as suddenly cease. Walking along a straight road, you see a mist apparently rising half a mile away, and when you come to the spot find that the rain has well soaked the road for a short distance. Then you may see a similar mist over a cane field, and notice that it is rolling steadily toward you. Listening, you hear a clattering, as if a regiment of cavalry was galloping along the road, and in a few seconds look for shelter against the big drops. It comes, wets you to the skin, and passes on up or down the road, leaving you very uncomfortable, but brightening up the vegetation and rousing the birds from their siesta.

These are the preliminary skirmishes, as it were. The rains have not yet come—only their vanguard. Presently they will be down in force to soak the parched earth and make every tree and shrub rejoice and blossom.

During the drought, animal life has been almost quiescent. Butterflies, moths, and beetles have been dormant as chrysalids. The foliage has hardened and lost its luscious taste; it would be therefore undesirable that larvae should be hatched at such a time. Ants have been busy as usual, however; their nests may be seen in the dry ground everywhere. Frogs hide themselves in cracks of the earth or crawl into the mud at the bottom of the almost dry canals. Spiders, centipeds, scorpions, and cockroaches go outside the house only to come back when the ground is sodden. A few flowers come up on the roadsides as the dense thicket of sour grass becomes less rampant, but toward the end of the season the parapets look almost bare.

Yesterday a heavy downpour closed the cracks in the dry ground and flooded some of the ants' nests in the garden. Today a regiment of great black ants is marching up the sides of the open gallery, and here and there one is running over the floor. Three quarters of an inch long, these creatures look rather formidable, but they are not vicious, nor is their nip painful. Out in the garden, however, a swarm of red fire ants is moving house, and if you happen to tread on the procession the mistake is very soon brought to your notice by sundry pricks and instillations of venom on your lower extremities. Then there are the tree ants, who make little nests the size of walnuts and keep