THE MYRMIDONS 159 



JULY 

 II 



THE MYRMIDONS 



I AM never sure when I am in a pine wood in 

 late summer whether or no I can hear the 

 tramp of the ants. On the whole, it must be 

 that we do hear an innumerable tiny ticking as 

 hollow leaves are trodden on and pine needles tilt 

 and fall back, a million scrapings of the bark 

 each one of which would be grotesquely inaudible 

 as the ants clamber here and there upon incessant 

 forage, even the twitching of their jaws as they 

 keep them in practice with imaginary work and 

 the singing of the air as it is drawn into twenty 

 million spiracles. If it is so, it must grow upon 

 us so gradually as we come into the wood that 

 the full din is never apparent. We shall need the 

 aid of the micro-phonograph to settle the question. 

 Sometimes people come into our wood, and as 

 they are picking a primrose, or walking with eyes 

 on the ground, or chance to look at the right spot 

 on a tree trunk, they see an ant. One solitary 

 ant, but of such a size that it might be three or 



