118 NATURE NEAR LONDON. 



Several other ants passed, each carrying the slender 

 needles which fall from firs, and which seemed nothing 

 in their powerful grasp. These burdens of wood all 

 went in one direction, to the right of the path. 



I took a step there, but stayed to watch two more 

 ants, who had got a long scarlet fly between them, 

 one holding it by the head and the other by the tail. 

 They were hurrying their prey over the dead leaves 

 and decayed sticks which strewed the ground, and 

 dragging it mercilessly through moss and grass. I 

 put the tip of my stick on the victim, but instead of 

 abandoning it they tugged and pulled desperately, 

 as if they would have torn it to pieces rather than 

 have yielded. So soon as I released it away they 

 went through the fragments of branches, rushing the 

 quicker for the delay. 



A little further there was a spot where the ground 

 for a yard or two was covered with small dead brown 

 leaves, last year's, apparently of birch, for some young- 

 birch saplings grew close by. One of these leaves 

 suddenly rose up and began to move of itself, as 

 it seemed ; an ant had seized it, and holding it by 

 the edge travelled on, so that as the insect was partly 

 hidden under it, the leaf appeared to move alone, 

 now over sticks and now under them. It reminded 

 me of the sight which seemed so wonderful to the 

 early navigators when they came to a country where, 

 as they first thought, the leaves were alive and walked 

 about. 



The ant with the leaf went towards a large heap 

 of rubbish under the sapling birches'. While watching 

 the innumerable multitude of these insects, whose 



