misery they should bring upon all the inhabitants--all these and other particulars, used there metaphorically, were again last summer used by God literally, in bringing to nought that typical "Euphrates," which in His time is to be "dried up," and which is being dried up now.

A Madras paper narrates the following curious occurrence. On the 13th of May, 1878, a very large number of locusts settled on a portion of the Madras line of railway, covering the metals for some distance. A passing train crushed some thousands of them, and the glutinous substance from their bodies rendered the rails so slippery that the wheels refused to take the metals, and the engine had to be brought to a stand-still, and the wheels and metals cleaned before the train could proceed. The train which followed was also detained by the same cause. This is not the first time I have heard of a railway-train being stopped by insects.

No wonder, therefore, when a multitude of insects which no man can number, can by their united strength accomplish so much, that people should attach such mysterious powers to them.

In our western part of England-Cornwall-the people call the ants "murians." I cannot tell whether there is any connection between this old Cornish word and our ordinary "murrain." The latter we know to signify cattle plague; but the people of Cornwall suppose the ants to be a race of "little people," separated from the world of men and women, and condemned for some crime to perpetual labour.

But of all ant stories, that which lately reached us from Colombo is perhaps the most astonishing. This ant hatches its eggs by artificial heat. It collects quantities of leaves, which, during the stage of decomposition, produce a high degree of temperature, giving life to the embryo.

Travelling through Alpine villages in Switzerland, and observing the ants there as well as the habits of the other

"people," I was struck with the dung-heaps of the natives: they placed them invariably just under their bedroom windows. What a lesson the Swiss might learn from the Colombo ants! for, so soon as their eggs are hatched, and as decomposition goes on, before the foliage becomes putrid they carefully carry it away, and stack it by itself at a distance from the nest.

Such mischief do the Colombo ants inflict on the branches of the trees, which they strip of their leaves in order to make a hot-bed for their eggs, that all manner of means have been employed to destroy them, although without success. It is said that the nests may be dug up with a plough or blown up with gunpowder; soaked with hot water or swamped out with cold; smothered with smoke or made abominable with chemical compounds; strewn with poison or scattered abroad with pitchforks ;— the ants return all the same, and apparently with a gaiety enhanced by their trials. Their motto appears to be what another class of people would do well to remember—

"Incessant pains the end obtains."

One plan alone was found to succeed, and that was so very curious and so suggestive that it is worthy of record. These Colombo ants were found to be excessively clean in their habits, and to have a detestation of dirt in their homes; so advantage was taken of their "amiable weakness," just as advantage is taken of other amiable weaknesses in human life the refuse foliage which the ants had so carefully stacked away from the nest in tidy heaps, mixed with grosser rubbish, was persistently scattered over and about the nest, when the whole colony was observed to decamp in disgust.

The late much-esteemed Frank Buckland had his sin gular household pets, consisting of tame monkeys and creatures of other lands, brought into a state of animal civilization by his kind treatment. Our poet Cowper, we

know, had his tamed hares, upon one of whom he wrote in his epitaph

And so, while several persons have applied to me for the means of destruction of their household pests, others have favoured me with interesting descriptions of their household pets, in either case the object being the same, namely, the "little people"-the common ant.

A few years ago, I received from a gentleman at the Crystal Palace a deeply interesting report of his observations on an ant's nest discovered in the joists of his house, between the floor of one room and the ceiling of another. The nest was composed entirely of masticated wood taken from the beams of the chamber near where the nest was discovered.

They worked as ants and bees commonly do, in the dark, never sleeping when in the imago or final state of life, but carrying on the family work between sunset and sunrise, bees gathering nectar and pollen between sunrise and sunset. The ants here mentioned made their large nest, then, in the dark, and the first observation made was with the nurses, who carefully promenaded with their pupæ every fine day, carefully depositing them in cradlelike compartments when the airing was complete. He observed, too, how, when a special messenger was hurrying about its business, when it was met by other ants they stopped, and after saluting each other with their antennæ it proceeded speedily about its business. This common mode of ant salutation may be observed any day near an ant-hill, and from it we may learn lessons of friendliness and politeness.

He was struck with their little notion of locality. Ants

generally appear to attach themselves to one spot, and they wander about apparently objectless if removed to another quarter; though should one ant, out of the way, meet with another ant from another nest, each will address the other. Is the last one inquiring the nearest way home?

Some animals, especially the cat and dog, have a very remarkable sense of the locality where they have lived, and cannot be persuaded to leave even an empty house. where they may have been accidentally or designedly left behind, even though starvation is before them. Too little is known, in one sense, of the habits of cats-too much in another, truly; but how wonderful is the bump of locality in a cat's brain; and yet if we look at the cerebral mass with the microscope, and compare it with the human brain, how little is the difference! I know of one cat who was frequently taken from Plymouth to Portsmouth, or vice versá, by steam-boat, and who always found her way back again; she would thus have to travel through three counties-Devonshire, Dorsetshire, and Hampshire-before reaching her home. Of another cat, removed from Dalston, in the northern part of London, to Peckham, in the south, in a basket, and secured in a cab, who quickly decamped from her new home, a neighbour writing to the owner from Dalston informing him that the cat was crying at the old door for admission. "Puss" must have crossed the bridge over the river, and, travelling through the crowded streets of London, have left the quiet of her new southern home for the old one in the north.

"I will not believe what I can't understand," said a gentleman in an argument over our dinner-table the other day. His knowledge, you see, was, like many others, just the limit of his belief. Would he explain this phenomenon -could he "understand" how this was done? How much we are compelled to believe which surpasses our understanding!

But even this story of the cat sinks into insignificance when we consider the marvellous passage of migratory birds, of which advantage is taken by an ancient translator, Beza, in St. Paul's second Corinthian letter, where he says, "We are willing rather to migrate from the body."* Ants migrate from one locality to another very seldom. The ants at the Crystal Palace exhibited their usual sagacity in their devotion to one another, though it must be admitted that it showed itself upon another occasion in a curious manner, for they got rid of the dead body of a comrade by eating him; but if they dispose of their defunct companions in so summary a manner, they manifest the most self-denying care for the living, being ready to sacrifice their own lives for the salvation of another.

One ant, having fallen into the water-always fatal to this insect was on the point of being drowned, when another, observing its danger, immediately came to its rescue and drew it out again. But the half-drowned ant was too much exhausted to stand upon its legs, and its helpmate too weak to carry it home, making several vain attempts to remove it, touching it with its antennæ, and, I suppose, cheering and encouraging it in the ant language. All appeared to be over; the patient fell down, remaining apparently lifeless below, when the friend who came to the rescue ran away, but presently returning, still alone, made another endeavour to restore animation, but again without effect; when, as if a new idea had struck him, he appealed to another ant, and together they succeeded in placing their restored friend in safety in the nest, where he would meet with the caresses and congratulations of his family -"and," I think I hear some sharp young friend exclaiming, "of course the other would receive the medal of the Royal Humane Society!"

This care which one ant exhibits for another, teaching us so touching a lesson in brotherly kindness, was taught

* 2 Cor. v. 8.