AXT COMMUNITIES 



was thereupon ventured to one of our company that we 

 should find our "hysterical hills'' busily building up 

 their cones like their fellows of other mounds, and as a 

 result settled into their normal composure. And so we 

 found it. They were working at the top of their bent, 

 and were subdued in temper and manner. Honest, 

 hearty physical toil had quieted them, as it often does 

 over-nervous human beings; or, perhaps it had filled 

 their natures with a present and pressing duty, thus 

 diverting them from that useless expenditure of force 

 that often comes from purposeless inaction. 



One must also note the immensity of the labors 

 wrought by the insects. These may seem trivial as one 

 watches them lifting up and placing here a pellet and 

 there a pellet of soil, and building them into the walls 

 of the common structure. But if the results be con- 

 sidered, they will seem astonishing for such small creat- 

 ures to accomplish. Perhaps a comparison with a noted 

 building achievement of our race, the great pyramid of 

 Egypt, may here be allowed. It is true that such com- 

 parisons are apt to be superficial and misleading, but 

 from a purely popular standpoint the}' are allowable 

 and may be instructive. The cubic contents of one of 

 the largest mounds was calculated to be in round num- 

 bers two million cubic inches. We may estimate the 

 bulk of an ant to be equal to that of a cylinder three- 

 eighths of an inch high and one-sixteenth of an inch in 

 diameter. Taking thirty-five one-hundred-thousandths 

 of a cubic inch as the bulk of a single worker ant, the 

 size of the builder would be to the size of the edifice as 

 one to fifty-eight hundred million. Let us compare 

 this with a corresponding estimate of the work of man, 

 taking his bulk as six cubic feet, and accepting the solid 



52 



