ANTS, WASPS, AND BEES. 203 



once forced to take shelter from his enemies in a 

 ruined building, he sat alone many hours, and, desi- 

 rous of diverting his mind from his hopeless condition, 

 at length fixed his observation upon an ant, which was 

 carrying a grain of corn (probably a pupa, which 

 somewhat resembles a grain of corn in shape and 

 size) larger than itself, up a high wall. Numbering 

 the efforts it made to accomplish this object, he found 

 that the grain fell sixty-nine times to the ground, but 

 the seventieth time it reached the top of the wall. 

 " This sight," said Timour, " gave me courage at the 

 moment, and I have never forgotten the lesson it 

 conveyed." 



Huber narrates the results of his watching the 

 labours of an ant on a rainy day. The insect began 

 by scooping out a groove of earth about a quarter of 

 an inch in depth, kneading the earth which it removed 

 into little pellets, and placing them on each side of 

 the groove, so as to form a kind of wall. The interior 

 of the groove was beautifully smooth and regular, and 

 when completed it looked very like a railway-cutting, 

 and performed a similar office. After completing this 

 task, it looked about and found that there was another 

 opening in the nest, to which a road must be made, 

 and straightway set to work upon a second sunken 

 path of a similar character, parallel to the first, and 

 being separated from it by a wall a third of an inch 

 in height. After relating this, the Rev. J. G. Wood 

 compares the labour of this ant with what would be 

 an equal amount of work for a man. He must have 

 excavated two parallel trenches, each of seventy-two 

 feet in length, and four feet six inches in depth. He 



