140 THE REASON WHY. 



" On every side are seen, descending down, 

 Thick swarms of sonldiers loaden from the town ; 

 Thus, in Battalia, inarch embody'd ants, 

 Fearful of winter, and of future' wants." DKYUEN. 



423. The ant-eater has two very large g ands situated below the roof of the 

 ton true. From this is emitted the glutinous liquid with which the long tongue is 

 lubricated when he puts it into the ants' nests. These glands are of the same 

 natu/e as those found in the lower jaw of the wood-pecker. The secretion when 

 wet is very clammy and adhesive, but on being dried it loses those qualities, and 

 may be pulverised between the finger and thumb. 



424. Why are ant-eaters of great importance in the economy 

 of nature? 



Because, without the check which they put upon the multi- 

 plication of ants, the produce of the soil, even in the most fertile 



parts of the world, would 

 inevitably be destroyed. It 

 seems almost incredible that 

 so robust and powerful an 

 animal as the ant-eater, or 

 ant-bear, can procure suffi- 

 cient subsistence from ants 

 alone ; but this circumstance 

 has nothing strange for those 

 who are acquainted with the 

 tropical parts of America, 

 where the ant-hills often 

 almost touch one another for 

 miles together. 



42. r >. The ant-hills of South America are often more than twenty feet in diameter, 

 and many feet in height. These wonderful edifices are thronged with two-hundred- 

 fold more inhabitants, and are proportionally far more numerous than the small 

 ones, with which we are better acquainted. Breeding in vast numbers, and 

 multiplying with great celerity and profusion, the increase of these insects would 

 soon enable them to swarm over the greatest extent of country, were not their 

 propagation and diffusion stinted by the active exertions of that part of the animal 

 creation which continually subsist by their destruction. 



The following short passage from Mr. Darwin's " Observations on the Natural 

 History of Rio de Janeiro" will give the reader a good idea of the magnitude of ants' 

 nests there : " Travelling onward we passed through tracts of pasturage, muco 

 injured by the enormous conical ants' nests, which were nearly twelve feet high. 

 They gave to tho plain exactly the appearance of the mud volcanoes at Jorullo, a* 

 figure \ by Humboldt." 



