when the ant was empty-handed, but they are troublesome barriers now that she is burdened with a seed quite as thick, twice as wide, and half as long as herself. "It is most interesting to see the skill, strength, and rapidity with which the little harvester swings the treasure over or around or pushes it beneath these obstacles. Now the seed has caught against the herbage as the porter dodges under a too-narrow opening. Then the ant backs out and tries another passage. Now the sharp points of the husk are entangled in the grass. The insect then pulls or jerks the burden till it is loosened, and then it hurries homeward. The road is reached at length, and then progress is comparatively easy. Holding the grain in her mandibles, well above the surface, she breaks into what I may describe, with sufficient accuracy, as a ‘trot,' and with little further interruption reaches the disc (that is, the entrance to the subterranean galleries), and disappears within the gate." These Texas ants exhibit extraordinary powers of strength, endurance, and perseverance in carrying building material. They have a strange fancy for adopting the Egyptian style of constructing pyramids for dwelling houses, some of which rise to the height of nearly three feet, and nearly six feet in diameter at the base. These pyramid-like habitations are built of little fragments of stone, some of which they carry to the very top, any one of which would weigh more than twenty-five times the weight of the insect, besides being nine times its bulk. The muscular power of the little people generally is almost incredible, being equal to a man, whose weight may be 160 lbs., carrying twenty-five times as much, or equal to 4000 lbs., say from the bottom of an English coal-mine up to the top of the Pyramid of Cheops, that is about 450 feet, or nearly fifty feet higher than our cathedral church of St. Paul's. The little people of Texas exhibit all the method which characterizes the most advanced agriculturist or mechanic, and in nothing are they more remarkable than in their division of labour; for, while some clear the ground, others are employed cutting at the roots of obstructing plants which come in the way of their progress; some being observed to climb the sprays of grass, bending them to the ground ready for the workers below: each branch of the busy family exhibiting all the characteristics of the most highly civilized community. Some work as our miners used to do, sometimes on their backs, sometimes on tip-toe and erect; and when the rains long continue, they do all in their power to dam up the roads and thus prevent their stores of food getting damaged. But when, notwithstanding all their efforts, the seed does get injured by the wet, then the industrious little creatures avail themselves of the first sunny day to bring out the moistened seed to get dried; and after a day or two's exposure to the air, it is again restored to the nests, except that which may have begun to sprout, which being useless and unfit for storing is invariably left out. Of this sprouting seed the author reckoned an entire quart could be gathered up from one place. Their care and discrimination is particularly observable in their search for food, one very remarkable instance of which is most agreeably related. Some ants one day were found bringing home some oats; as none grew in the neighbourhood the wonder was where the oats came from. Following one of the ants after one grain had been safely brought home, after pacing about 450 feet a parcel of trampled straw was reached; here some travellers had recently rested, who had fed their horses with oats, the scattered grains of which the ants had fortunately discovered. The ant, who was patiently watched, plunged amid the straw, and soon finding a loosened grain, immediately seized it, turning it from side to side with what the author describes as "manifest satisfaction," walking around it, lifting it a number of times from the ground as if to try its weight, and to balance it for more easy removal; and, at length, having satisfactorily adjusted the load, the ant set out on her return journey, accomplishing the entire distance without once stopping to rest, or even to change the position of the burden. On the way home from the oat straw many other labourers were met, en route for the traveller's camp, all of whom had in some way, the author says, received intelligence of the prize and its whereabouts. وو Our chapter on antennal communication will, we think, leave no doubt on our reader's mind that the " some way was by means of these very remarkable organs articulating directly in the insect's brain. On the following day to that in which the above observation was made, the nest was revisited; all the chaff was thrown outside, and at least a pint of oats were found to have been brought home by the persevering creatures; and as no more workers were observed to pass to or from the straw, it was inferred that the fortunate harvest had been finally gathered in. What would the fellow author and countryman, Mark Twain, say to this, we wonder? This harvesting habit does not so much apply to English ants, remarkable as we have seen them to be in their provident habits, but it does to other tribes, and to several species of ants in Eastern lands. Very interesting is the author's chapter on the ancient belief in the harvesting habits of some ants. Horace (B.c. 30) tells us that "the little ant, of great industry, bears away in her mandibles whatever she can, and adds it to the store which she is accumulating, not unmindful nor improvident of the future. But then, as soon as Aquarius saddens the ended year, she ceases to creep forth from her nest, and wisely uses those stores which she has gathered beforehand." Virgil, too, the friend of Horace (B. c. 40), observing the order of an army of ants in search of food, likens them to an invading army, and we have the following interesting translation from this close observer of natural phenomena: "Thus in battalia march embodied ants, * This ancient belief in the harvesting nature of some species of ants is found in the Hebrew name for ant, Nemalah, from the verb Namal, to cut off, an instance of which may be found in the book of Job (chap. xxiv. 6), in * As an interesting comparison of the wisdom of the ant against that of an elephant, I copy the following anecdote from the letter of a correspondent to the Standard newspaper of September 3, 1879, on the subject of instinct: "I have been told," he writes, "that three elephants were engaged in taking a heavy gun up a steep acclivity; two were harnessed to the carriage, the third pushed, as I believe is usual. The wheels got into a deep rut, and presently the third elephant trotted off into the jungle, and it was thought he had run away; but he presently returned with a huge branch of a tree, and at once proceeded to belabour the harnessed elephants to make them mend their pace. I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of this from the source I received it, and if true, is it not characteristic of reason?" But what must we say of the reason of our "Jumbo:" he who excited so much sympathy in the spring of this memorable year, 1882! The story of his history must be fresh in the memory of all our readers. His fondness for his old home in the " Zoo; " his affection for his little wife "Alice;" his obedience to his keepers; his humble appeal, on his knees, to be let alone; and finally his philosophy, when he perceived the power of mind over matter, to adopt the old maxim, that "what can't be cured must be endured." What an illustration of the words of Job: "Ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee." If only the intelligence of our antediluvian forefather had equalled the instinct of this antediluvian brute, how our English translation rendered, "They reap every one his corn in the fields; " translated by Dr. Mason Good, “In the field they cut down his corn," an allusion to the propensity of Arabian robbers who live by depredations on others; a passage thus rendered by Jerome (A.D. 380), They break in upon the fields of others and rob them of their grain, instead of cultivating the earth themselves." 66 In the original Hebrew word, then, Nemalah, and in the Arabic word still used for ant, Nimul, there is reference to one of the most remarkable traits of intelligence exhibited by ants, as well of other lands as of our own, namely, that act of cutting from off the seed the head or germ, to keep it from growing or sprouting. Sixteen hundred years ago Ælian gave a graphic account of the gleaning operation of ants around a threshing-floor. Writing in the second century we read, "When the crops are gathered the ants assemble to the threshing, bustling up and down upon the threshing-floors singly, in pairs, in triplets; leaving their own home and accustomed roof, they seize the wheat and barley and return with them upon a common path. Some choose out the grains, others fall-to bearing burdens, and with high honour and courtesy they yield the path to each other, particularly the unburdened to those who are carrying loads. When they have returned to their caves, they pile up the grain in separate heaps and gnaw through each grain in the middle. The gnawing they convert into food. The rest of the seed, because thus gnawed, is sterile. In this manner these most noble and much of suffering and sorrow would the human race have been spared! No; Jumbo refused to listen to the voice of the charmer, his wife being used as the instrument to decoy him into his trap, upon which the sensible brute would not so much as set his foot. And when at last he was, like Sampson, bound, what commiseration was felt by the 16,600 visitors who visited him in one day, as, lifting up his chains and showing them to the crowd, his look of tenderness reminded one of the exclamation of the patriarch: "Pity me, oh my friends!" |
