THE ANTS. 47 



gone for ever. They threw themselves on it like demons, 

 and though it rolled on its back amputating and decapitat- 

 ing until limbs and heads and headless trunks strewed the 

 ground, all the fury of despair was of no avail against the 

 numbers that continued to heap themselves on it. At length 

 its struggles grew feebler and feebler, its ponderous jaws 

 opened and shut slowly, like some animate rat-trap sighing 

 for rats, and its life ebbed away. The scene was Homeric, 

 and I felt like breathless Jupiter watching Hector on his 

 fatal day, when he felt the movings of pity, yet let fate take 

 its course. This was an epitome of the whole struggle. It 

 must have raged all night, but neither side got a victory. 

 In the morning each was in quiet possession of its own 

 ground, and the fruits of the battle were many hundred 

 corpses and a moral. 



Solomon has advised us, or most of us, to go to the ant 

 and consider her ways, and it is good to follow his advice. 

 Her ways repay consideration. But it is of vital importance 

 that we go to the right sort of ant. What a lesson, for 

 instance, in malice and all uncharitableness would one learn 

 who went to the red ant which infests the cerrinda-bushts 

 on Matheran and Khandalla, or on the slopes of Elephanta 

 Island ! Malice, hate, fury and fierceness, wrath and rancour, 



