Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/299

Rh active too, and we often flashed the light on one of them, hunting in the night.

Under fallen logs we found an admirable hunting ground for various invertebrates. Land crabs were often unearthed at considerable distances from the water. Centipeds of all sizes were abundant, some of them twelve to thirteen inches in length. Many millipeds and centipeds were found in their little nests where they lay eggs and rear young. Some of these nests were simple hollows in the soft pulp of rotting logs, others were carefully made dome-like structures formed from little pellets of mud. But the greatest find under fallen logs was the curious Peripatus, a primitive arthropod which resembles the segmented worms in many characteristics. These beautiful velvety animals glide slowly along, feeling their way with the two antennae at the anterior end. If touched, they turn about and squirt two viscid threads from beneath the head. These threads, which harden quickly, serve to capture prey or entangle aggressors.

Termites were abundant in dry places everywhere up to an altitude of about 5,000 feet. They never come out into the light, but always construct covered galleries of wood-dust, dirt, excrement, etc., wherever they go. Some species live in the ground and build great mounds over old stumps and logs; others make mud nests on tree trunks from which they build galleries in various directions. These insects live in great colonies in which there are usually several enormous egg-laying queens and thousands of workers and soldiers. They eat away a piece of wood so that the interior is converted into a powder while the exterior is perfect. A log is thus reduced to a thin shell which crumbles at a touch.

Probably the most characteristic and interesting animals in tropical