How varied are their habits! Poisonous ones fly slowly. Others merely frisk about, toying with life, air, and sunlight; skirt-dancers they are called (megaluras), “sown and carried away again by the light air.” Some heavy-bodied butterflies gain protection by flight so rapid as to make them mistaken for humming-birds. The broad, strong strokes of the wide-winged morphos float them across wide rivers. The flight of butterflies is a biologist’s problem, as well as their colored juices and seasonal forms.
Some, flying low, have their greatest brilliancy on the under side of the wings; others, flying high, are dull underneath to protect them from enemies below, as the bell-bird, whose home is in the dazzling sunshine above the tree-tops, is made invisible to any eyes looking upward by its snow-white plumage and transparent wings.
“Crepuscular” butterflies emerge at sunset. Such are the caligos, amazing creatures equipped on the under side with an owl’s head, which can terrify their pursuers by merely turning wrong side out. All animals are suspicious of a strange-looking eye; and at dusk, when the butterfly descends to the jungle pool to drink, the owl-eyes are particularly effective. The harmless butterfly spreads the one view of itself to the enemy which could save its life, and continues slowly to sip the dark water.
Some butterflies stop in the gloomiest shades of the forest in darkness of noon. They all love the damp, and quantities of them surround puddles. Some settle with wings erect, some expand them and rest head downward, pressed closely against the supporting surface. The “swallow-tails” never allow their long tails to touch anything. Some alight upon the end of a stick, others rest upon dead leaves, others upon rocks or sand, some on the under surface of leaves, entirely disappearing when they alight. While some are protected for motion, others are protected for rest. Flickering noiselessly into the deep, wet shade in the network of vines and succulent leaves, they flash out into the clear sunlight. The glow of colors pulsates on their shining blue wings, intense as the fathomless blaze of a fragment of copper-saturated driftwood. Creatures of the sky they are, indeed, touched with the celestial hue. It was not without reason that the Greeks gave the same name to this wondrous insect and to the soul.
CHAPTER V
THE JUNGLE IN PARADOX
“There is a strange beast, the which for his great heavinesse, and slownesse in moving, they call Perico-ligero, or the little-light-dogge; hee hath three nailes to every hand, and mooves both hand and feete as it were by compasse, and very heavily; it is in face like to a monkie, and hath a shrill crie; it climeth trees, and eates ants.”
Father Acosta
The uncouth sloth! Can any greater emblem of misery be conceived? He hangs upside down upon a branch like a bundle of rags on a nail. His hair is like dried grass, stiff, with a greenish tinge, and, as might be expected, goes the wrong way. His long arms are jointless, swinging to and fro like the end of a rope. He can turn his head all about, till his round, simple face meets the wind; then he opens his toothless mouth to take it in, giving rise to a tradition that he lives on air. His want of teeth is supplied by long nails—his only means of attack—with which he scrapes out ants. Whether
A SLOTH, FROM THE HISTORIAE RERUM NATURALIUM BRASILIAE, AMSTERDAM, 1648.