Year: 1870


A writer of an interesting article in Au
the Year Round, upon the habitations of
ants, thus describes the extinguishment
| Tttfd, or wood ants


ut was composed mainly of twigs,
straw, and pine spicul@, and swarmed
with insect life. Poking our walking.
sticks into the top of the mound, and lay
ing bare the upper surface the formicans,
who up till then had been wholly una
ware of our presence, began to under
stand that calamity had come upon them.
! Betaking themselves, as is their wont, to
the care Of the young, countless thousands
of them suddenly appeared, each carrying
a cocoon much bigger than itself, which
it was evidently anxious to deposit in
some place out of the reach of danger
which, although they could not compre-
hend, they knew to be both formidable
and imminent. Such hurry skurry,
such running to and fro, such getting
| up and down stairs, as the song says, such
commotion could scarcely have been
known even at Brussels on the memora-
BILE night of the ball, on the eve Of the
great battle of Waterloo, when 1t was
suddenly announced to the officers of the
allied armies that the French were ad-
vancing upon the city
| When thronged the citizens with terror dumb,


| Or whispering with white lips, The foe-they
comei they comei'


"We all looked on with interested
curiosity, and one of my companions hav-
ing finished his first cigar, drew box of
lucifers from his pocket, and leisurely
proceeded to light second. This done,
he carelessly threw the burning match
upon the ant hill. 1t was an act as cruel
as it would have been in Lemuel Gulli-
yer, had that mountainous traveller will
fully set fire TO the city of Liliput. The
| formicans were for an instant confused,
and appeared not to know what to do.
But their perplexity was of short dura-
tion. In less than half a minute scores
and hundreds of ants rushed upon the
blazing beam-for such it must have ap-
pesred in their eyes-and exerting their
strength simultaneously upon it, en-
deavored to thrust il, from their city. Many
of them were burned to death in the gal
liant endeavor, but the survivors, nothing
daunted, pressed forward over their dead
or writhing bodies, as if conscious that
there was no safety for those who still
lived as long as the awful combustible
was permitted to blaze and crackle in the
midst of them. l was apprehensiye that
the whole mound, built as it was OF dry
twigs, would take fire /; but the mists had
lain upon the mountain and the valley,
the air was moist, and the flame of the
match burnt upwards. EDWARDS rushed
the resolute firemen, sscore upon score,
hundred upon hundred, till at last they
rolled the match over and over, and ont
of their precincts, charred and blackened
and incapable Of further mischief We
all, more or less, mistrusted our eyes, and
the youngest, most thoughtless, and there.
fore the most cruel, of our company sug
gested that If there were intelligence and
design on the part of the ants in acting as
we supposed they had done, there would
be no harm in making q second expert
ment. No sooner said than done. An
other match was ignited and thrown upon
the heap, and again, precisely as on the
first occasion, the ants rushed pell nell
upon the blazing intruder, to prevent a
oonflagration, which, had it taken firm hold,
it would have been impossible for them
to extinguish. Again some of the fore
most champions OF the public safety lost
their limbs, and many more of them their
lives; and by the mere force and pressure
of numbers acting with a common pur-
pose, the match was extruded before much
harm had been done. l opposed myself
to third renewal Of the experiment, and
succeeded in persuading my companions,
although not without difficulty, that
enough had been done for curiosity and
natural history that truly merciful man
was as merciful to the smallest as to the
largest of Gods creatures and that we
had no right, in the mere wantonness OF
scientific observation, to take away the
life which it was impossible for US to be-
stow"