ANTS AND APHIDS. 17 



III. 



June 17, '99. Tis the heart of June- time, 

 with a blue sky, a balmy breeze, a glorious sun- 

 shine. 'Tis a day when the turmoil of the city, 

 the jar and noise of moving train and tram-car, 

 is far away ; a day when the moss on the boulder 

 beneath my head is soft and grateful to the 

 touch. Let peaceful quiet pervade. Let the 

 clear ringing call of the cardinal be the loudest 

 note which greets my ear. 



As I sauntered slowly hither, I noted by the 

 pathway a clump of curled dock 1 on the stems of 

 which were hundreds of dark, leaden-gray plant- 

 lice, or aphids, their bodies swollen with the 

 juices they had imbibed or rather sucked, from 

 the soft succulent stems. Over the dock there 

 crawled rapidly numerous large, black ants 

 which, as they moved, were waving their an- 

 tennae swiftly to and fro as if in search of some- 

 thing lost. As I looked, an ant approached 

 closely one of the thicker-bodied of the lice, 

 when the latter turned its abdomen upward and 

 exuded therefrom a drop of liquid, clear as crys- 



l JRurnex crispus L. 

 (2) 



