ANT COMMUNITIES 



sort. Her fellow-citizens seemed ignorant of the fact, 

 and it is doubtful if she remembered it herself. Such 

 sentimental considerations have no weight in this wholly 

 utilitarian government and society. 



Perhaps this is she who slips out of the throng, and, 

 ascending a bit of a clod hard by, squats upon her hind 

 legs and begins to preen her downy coating. What to 

 her now is all the busv scene beneath her? Let the 



*/ 



emmet world wag on as it will; she must be clean. 

 And so, in peaceful unconsciousness of all and sundry in 

 her sphere of being, she proceeds with the one present 

 purpose of life, and thoroughly cleanses herself in the 

 approved mode, as hereafter will be described. And now, 

 her purifications being finished, she yawns, stretches 

 her limbs, gives her antennre a final brush, and 

 leisurely descends from her perch. A moment she 

 stands as though undecided, then plunges again into the 

 whirl of activity on and around the new works, and 

 soon is indistinguishable from her fellows. 



In the review of these building operations several 

 reflections arise. Here was a test of the ability of ants 

 to meet a new experience, such as was the destruction 

 of one-half of their republic. Accidents like the breach 

 made by a cow's foot they had known and remedied, 

 but no such misfortune as then faced them had ever 

 befallen. Yet they met it with admirable spirit and 

 method, and with success. They set themselves at once 

 to the work of reconstruction, not only with vigor but 

 with practical wisdom, and with ready adaptation of 

 means to the new conditions. Their instinct was 

 sufficiently elastic to cover a strange and colossal ad- 

 versity; or, may we infer that the appeal in the 



emergency was to something other than routine instinct 



50 



