And these are all we have to fear, unless it be now and then a huge spider, which it is not the fashion here to kill, as they feed on flies.

So comfort yourself with the thought that, as regards insect pests, we are quite as comfortable as in an country-house, and infinitely more comfortable than in English country-house, and infinitely more comfortable than in a Scotch shooting lodge, let alone an Alpine chalet.
Lizards run about the walks in plenty, about the same size is the green lizard of the South of Europe, but of more sober colours.

The parasol ants--of whom I could tell you much, save that you will read far more than I can tell you in half a dozen books at home--walk in triumphal processions, each with a bit of green leaf borne over its head, and probably, when you look closely, with a little ant or two riding on it, and getting a lift home after work on their stronger sister's back--and these are all the monsters which you are likely to meet.
Would that there were more birds to be seen and heard! But of late years the free Negro, like the French peasant during the first half of this century, has held it to be one of the indefeasible rights of a free man to carry a rusty gun, and to shoot every winged thing.

He has been tempted, too, by orders from London shops for gaudy birds--humming-birds especially.

And when a single house, it is said, advertises for 20,000 bird-skins at a time, no wonder if birds grow scarce; and no wonder, too, if the wholesale destruction of these insect-killers should avenge itself by a plague of vermin, caterpillars, and grubs innumerable.