Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1884 — Insect and Reptile Life in India. [ARTICLE]

Insect and Reptile Life in India.

It is during the rainy season, beginning with July and ending with September, that the insects and reptile life in India is in full force; when the steaming heat has evoked a sudden burst of intense vegetation which the scorching drought of the previous three months has kept dormant. Then, also, .these lower forms of animal creation; as if hitherto dormant from the same cause, burst into sudden and redoubled life. Each patch of the almost visibly-grow-ing grass teems with multitudes of insects, whose ephemeral life seems to begin and e'nd with the season, or may conceal reptiles harmless or noxious to man. Each footstep has now more than ever to be watched against the chance of lighting at any time upon a dangerous reptile. Among the daily and familiar signs of the insects and reptile- life of India, water-snakes, harmless in bite,may be seen swimming about in pools of water, rejoicing in the frogs which these supply, or along the margins of lakes with heads just showing above the surface; droves of frogs may be seen trooping up your veranda steps as if intoxicated with the shower of rain; to be ignominiously shot out again by chankedar or sweeper standing guard over the doors; wasps and large fierce hornets pounce upon every unprotected eatable;dark clouds of the house-fly, now swelled to numbers easily to suggest a plague, contest possession of the breakfast table; aunts, large anil small, defile in large columns down the walls of your room, exploring ! fresh country or establishing communi- ! cation between their nests and an unprotected sugar bowl; hunting spiders are stalking flies on glass doors opening on your verandahlizafds, perchance, are stalking the spiders themselves, or other flies on the wall: splendid ichneumon flies dart in. and out of the room, making minute examinations

of your furniture or dragging live caterpillars or huge spiders up to their little mud cells along the edge of your bookcase; bees of , both species, wild and domesticated, and of various sizes of each, from no bigger than a housefly, pursue their flight to and from their nests in the dense foliage of the trees. As dd«;kness falls, the various beetles, huge and small, Booths and multitudes of noissome insects that wing their noisy way through the night air strike in showers upon your face, take up the tale; and the mosquitoes, true beasts of prey, minute but savage, emerge from the folds of your door curtains to prey upon yourself and make the air more alive with their hostile buzz. — All the Year Hound.'