tremendous uproar--tree-frogs, crickets, goat-suckers, and owls
all joining to perform a deafening concert. One kind of goat-
sucker kept repeating at intervals throughout the night a phrase
similar to the Portuguese words, "Joao corta pao,"--"John, cut
wood"-- a phrase which forms the Brazilian name of the bird. An
owl in one of the Genipapa trees muttered now and then a
succession of syllables resembling the word "Murucututu."
Sometimes the croaking and hooting of frogs and toads were so
loud that we could not hear one another's voices within doors.
Swarms of dragonflies appeared in the daytime about the pools of
water created by the rain, and ants and termites came forth in
the winged state in vast numbers. I noticed that the winged
termites, or white ants, which came by hundreds to the lamps at
night, when alighting on the table, often jerked off their wings
by a voluntary movement. On examination I found that the wings
were not shed by the roots, for a small portion of the stumps
remained attached to the thorax. The edge of the fracture was in
all cases straight, not ruptured; there is, in fact, a natural
seam crossing the member towards its root, and at this point the
long wing naturally drops or is jerked off when the insect has no
further use for it. The white ant is endowed with wings simply
for the purpose of flying away from the colony peopled by its
wingless companions, to pair with individuals of the same or
other colonies, and thus propagate and disseminate its kind. The
winged individuals are males and females, while the great bulk of
their wingless fraternity are of no sex, but are of two castes,
soldiers and workers, which are restricted to the functions of
building the nests, nursing, and defending the young brood. The
two sexes mate while on the ground, after the wings are shed; and
then the married couples, if they escape the numerous enemies