Morning journal and courier., 1884-08-12
THE NILJTARy IEAGrTE
THE NATIONAL LEAGUI
THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION.
Fr1endships Among Animals.

"There, said man, holding up box containing variety of insects, lis a happy family for you, worth having. They are all live from time to time in the nests of ants, and evidently on the best of terms with them. Here are insects that the ants ordina- rily would attack and carry off as food, but in peculiar friendship the creatures live with each other on the very best terms imag- inable."
 Perhaps they are slaves,'' suggested the visitor.
 "That may be so," was the reply, "but the general impression is that these animals are kept by the ants for a variety of reasons This one may be valued for the odor it gives out and is the cologne of the ants. Another exudes something like honey, which they eat, and so on. The latter case is well known, and people who have watched have found that the ants take especial pains to take care of the young so that they won't die out. In other words they take the eggs into their un- derground holes in the winter, and carry them. out in the spring, placing them on plants that they know they like. In the nest of the common yellow ant four or five dis tinct species are found. In addition to them are large number of the insects have here that are pets, friends, visitors, hangers-on and domestic animals of the ants. Professor Markell has stated that a nest of Formica rufa contains over a thousand of such pets or friends, and in the nests of Lasius. ac- cording to Lubbock they are even more nu- merous. have careful list compiled by Andre, giving five hundred and eighty odd species of insects that he has found with ants, and five hundred and forty of them were beetles. The study of the guests that make up this happy family would last life time"
 "Are you sure that it is happy familyg'' asked the visitor. ''I have seen monkey in so-called happy family swinging it's col league, cat, about by the tail"
 Undoubtedly" ," said the collector, 'Emany of these visitors are not welcome-such as the parasitic mites that prey upon the ants, and a small black fly of the genus Phora, that lays it's eggs on them. But the majority of insects are, as rule, acceptable. Here is one, observed by Lubbock-the Beckia-that runs about in the nest in great numbers, busting among the ants, pushing them one side, but never noticed by them. Another, the wh1tewood 1ouse, is very conspicuous in the nest, and is never molested by it's pests. These two are blind from living so long in the dark. Some of the blind inmates, as the beetle clsViger, are so dependent upon their host that, according to Muller, they feed them as carefully as you would blind friend or relative.
 'In all exhibitions of animals" continued the insect man, 'tthe happy family, which sometimes proves a very unhappy one, forms a prominent feature. Cats, dogs, monkeys and all kinds of animals that are from the very nature of things antagonistie to each other are confined together, and either forced to agree, or from continual association become habituated to their surroundings. All this seems unnatural and even cruel, but, strangely enough, similar state of things is found in nature, where animals of the most opposite kinds take up their homes together, and live on terms of the closest intimacy.
 "Some time ago vessel stopped at the is lands called the Chickens, on the New Eng