A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS. 133 



monarch-oak alone supports seventy different kinds of in- 

 sects a swarm, which sets all measurement at defiance, 

 arid, moreover, replaces by numbers and the enormous 

 voracity which they exhibit, what they want in bodily 

 magnitude. 



Already Pliny was surprised to see small ants run up 

 the tall cypress, and devour its rich fruit with surprising 

 avidity ; he wondered that so insignificant an insect should 

 be allowed to destroy the seed of the largest tree of his 

 country. But plants have to support guests of every size 

 and shape. The butterfly and its less gaudy relations, 

 drink with their long trunks sweet honey out of gorge- 

 ously colored flower-cups ; four-winged bees carry away 

 the precious dust of anthers in large spoons, fastened to 

 their thighs ; gall insects pierce with sharp daggers the 

 tender leaf, drink its refreshing juice, and deposit their 

 eggs in the delicate texture ; beetles gnaw and saw with a 

 hundred curiously shaped instruments through the hardest 

 wood of noble trees, and naked, helpless-looking worms 

 make the very trunk their cover and their home, and with 

 sharp augers often destroy whole forests. The ingenious 

 ant of South America has its winter residence in the 

 warm ground, and its cool summer house on tall plants. 

 For there grows on the banks of the Amazon river a 

 gigantic reed, nearly thirty feet high, which is frequently 

 crowned with a large ball of earth, like the golden globe 

 on the utmost end of a lofty church steeple. This is the 

 comfortable home of myriads of ants, which retire to these 

 safe dwellings, high and dry, at the time of rains and 

 during the period of inundation, rising and descending in 



