24 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



but cedars all strewn in confusion, crossing and inter- 

 lacing, with no path through the jungle. Watch this 

 ant travelling patiently onward, and mark the dis- 

 tance traversed by the milestone of a tall bennet. 



First up on a dry white stalk of grass lingering 

 from last autumn ; then down on to a thistle leaf, 

 round it, and along a bent blade leading beneath into 

 the intricacy and darkness at the roots. Presently, 

 after a prolonged absence, up again on a dead fibre 

 of grass, brown and withered, torn up by the sheep 

 but not eaten : this lies like a bridge across a yawning 

 chasm the mark or indentation left by the hoof of a 

 horse scrambling up when the turf was wet and soft. 

 Halfway across the weight of the ant overbalances it, 

 slight as that weight is, and down it goes into the 

 cavity : undaunted, after getting clear, the insect 

 begins to climb up the precipitous edge, and again 

 plunges into the wood. Coming to a broader leaf, 

 which promises an open space, it is found to be hairy, 

 and therefore impassable except with infinite trouble ; 

 so the wayfarer endeavours to pass underneath, but has 

 in the end to work round it. Then a breadth of 

 moss intervenes, which is worse than the vast prickly 

 hedges with which savage kings fence their cities to 

 the explorer, who can get no certain footing on it, 

 but falls through and climbs up again twenty times, 

 and burrows a way somehow in the shady depths 

 below. 



Next, a bunch of thyme crosses the path ; and 

 here for a lengthened period the ant goes utterly out 



