The Hawaiian gazette., 1908-09-22

The gardens. however, were not the
only citadels the ant army attempted
to take. They invaded the sacred pre-
cincts of the home and caused the
blush Of humiliation to come TO the
cheek of matron of Empire who had
made great preparations to entertain
at dinner party of guests from the
estates.
There were only four in the woman s
tamily--her husband, herself and two
sons. Four visitors had come for dim
ner, and she remembered that two
extra leaves must be put into the table
that all might have room to dine. The
maid did not know how the leaves were
inserted. and the woman of Empire un-
dertook the task. A servant brought
out thin iron crate that held the
unused leaves, and, much to the chagrin
of the hostess, the two heavy mission
oak table leaves fell into a crumbled
mass when she tried TO remove them
| from the crate. The leaves were of
| the hardest oak, and had been on the
| isthmus only two years, but the ants
had cut them up, probably during the
| first year.
1t remained for Edward Schildhauer,
an electrical and mechanical engineer
of Colonel Goethalsfs designing staff,
to stem the tide of ant invasion by
electricity He had given much time
to the study of ant destruction by the
use of chemical mixtures, but he aban-
doned it as hopeless task and turned
his attention to electrical destruction.
Ground Deals Death.
h "It seems to me- he remarked one
day to one of the designing engineers
"that if electricity will open and close
the proposed gates of the great Gatur
locks and kill man whom the law has
ordered to be put to death it ought tc
wipe out or at least keep off that miser
able insect called the ant.
Mr.. Schildhauer went into his garden
at Culebra one morning armed with a
dozen batteries, few yards of insulat
ed wire and two files. He had observed
that the ant army entered his garden
from only one point, and he found the
path. He laid across it two parallel
steel files and connected up each on
the circuit As the ants stepped from
one file to the other they were electro
cuted, but they soon found out some
thing was wrong and they diverted
their path, marching around Schild'
hauer Is electrical dam.
Sehildhauer gave up the electrical
destruction as impracticable, but his
idea was made effective by IL. +. Tuck
er, his associate, whose garden has moi
known an ant since he put up his eec
trical barriers.
Mr.. fuckers plan was on a larger
scale. He smoothed off the ground
around his garden and made leve
path for about fifty yards of copper
wire, and protected it from short cir
cults. He connected the wire with 6
powerful battery, and the moment al
ant army approached it the leaders
were killed. With their generals
iors and captains gone, the arm,
shifted to another route, but the cleo
trical destruction was repeated. Re
Ipeatedly the ants assaulted the gardel
barrier, but without success. Then the,
retreated to the jungle and gave up tn
attack for several days, only to return
with unlimited numbers. The attacl
on the wires was bold one. The in
domitable little creatures LITERAL,
stormed the copper breastworks, bu
only to meet defeat. Not unlike tn
scene of the sunken road at Waterloo
the wire barricade was filed with tel
Thousand dead.