He lives his life in the topmost boughs of an African palm--a feathered dome amid the forest--and there beneath the blue sky he browses till he descends into the warm earth to sleep in chrysalis form before he emerges as a splendid moth, with glass windows in his wide wings to sail with the fire-flies through the dark vaults of the silent woods." "All that from a caterpillar ?" "That and much more, Dicky." "And where will this study of the caterpillar lead you, Godfrey?
One can't live on a caterpillar." "Yet there is one kind--fat and creamy--that makes good soup." "Ugh, you cormorant! But tell me seriously, what is the end of your studies--where will they lead you ?" "To Central Africa." "Do you mean that, Venning ?" "I do, Dick.

There is one spot on the map of Africa that is marked black.

That spot is covered over hundreds of square miles by the unexplored forest.

Think what that means to me!" "Fever most likely--or three inches of spear-head." "A forest big enough to cover England! Just think of the new forms of life--from a new ant to an elephant or hornless giraffe.

The okapi was discovered near that great hunting-ground--and, who is to say there are not other animals as strange in its untrodden depths ?" "Is it a wild-fowl, the okapi ?" "A wild-fowl, you duffer!" exclaimed Venning, indignantly.