The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1900-08-13
SOUTH AFRICAN ANTS.
TFrom the London Mail. I

Tommy at the front will be making
acquaintance now with a great many
animals and insects with whose friend
ship he would gladly dispense. One of
the pests of South Africa are the ants;
the black ones that prey upon a mans
person when they get the chance, and
the white ones, that eat and enjoy any
thing from pair of boots to bed room
curtain.
When Baldwin was hunting in Africa
between the years 1852 and 1860, taking
the country between Natal and the
stantly with these ants. So vicious
were the attentions of the black ones
that, valiant hunter though he was,
they come off the victors in a tussle
between himself and them.
Had some exciting sport with sea
COWS in a narrow river with very high
reeds on both banks" he writes in his
diary. ITO get a shot I was obliged to
climb the trees overhanging the river,
and had one or two good chances, but
the villainous black ants fell upon me
vigorously and in such countless null
titudes, biting so severely that flesh and
blood could not possibly hold out an
other second. I was forced to descend,
and an old sea COW had been lodging
for two hours is indebted to the black
ants for her life
The white ants are exceedingly fond
of raiding the happy homes of the colon
lists. They undermine the foundations
known to the contingent from Australia,
where this creature is as much pest
as he is in South Africa. Tommy"
from the Australian colonies will rank
as an old stager when dealings with
these destructive nuisances are being
carried on, and will be able to narrate
many a. narrowing story concerning
them and their proves.
There are several varieties of the ant
tribe, but they all seem to be fully i'm
pressed with the proverb, I'm union
is strenth." A house mistress will go to
bed happy one evening, and the next
morning when she descends will be con-
fronted with the mangIed rem aims of
what the night before had been her sit
been furnished by it to leg1onS of ants,
who have not had the honesty to come
by day for the hospitality that they
know would be denied them, but have
secretly made their way through the
fioor-a vast and greedy army-and
have departed again before the house
hold has awakened.
The anthills of South Africa will be a.
revelation to Tommy" Fancy a mound
thirty feet high and 100 feet in circum-
ference! H. Lincoln Tangye, the Afri-
can traveller, refers in his book, I'm
New South Africa to the protection
these heaps afforded his camp. I'VE
made our camp on the sloping sides of
huge anthill, protected by it's mass
and the clump of trees growing on it
from the bitter southeast wind" On
one hill he counted twenty trees of
various sizes growing, the majority of
them thirty forty feet in height
Happily there is an ant bear in South
Africa. The Beers call it "aardvaark.''
the earth pig. 1t and the ants are dead
ly enemies, and both work at night. In
it's habit of boring the "aardvaark'' is
like the mole, but it is much more
terrifying creature to come across I'M
expectedly than is the little brown
creature with which Englishmen are ia
miliar.
This busy underground marauder for
gets to fill up the holes it makes when
it arrives the outer crust of the
veldt, with the consequence that to the
rider these are pitfalls more dangerous
than are the rabbit holes in an English
warren to horsemen here. 1t also
causes CONSERVATION to the nervous by
tunneling just sufficiently high to ere
ate a series of convulsive earthquakes
as a guide to its subterranean prone
nades. Not guessing what the cause is,
it is alarming to see the ground ripple
all of a sudden and mounds of loose
earth be thrown up here and there.
The t'aardvaark'' is SO ugly, and its
appearance is SO sudden and totally I'M
announced, that stalwart men have
been known to flee before it. A colonist
recalls one story of the war in Zululand,
when an ant bear confronted a sentry
on guard one midnight, with the result
that Tommy was SO taken aback that
he fed Immediately, startling the camp
with the awful news that the old gen.
tleman" was in their midst