S THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



building its wonderful nest belongs plainly to a different 

 genus from the quality .which enables ants to " vote, keep 

 drilled armies, hold slaves, and dispute about religion," as 

 Mark Twain says they do, or even to talk. They certainly 

 do talk about as freely as we do. I once killed a centipede, 

 and very soon a foraging ant found it. He, or rather she, 

 surveyed it carefully, estimated the horse-power requisite to 

 move it, and then started off homewards. Meeting another 

 ant, she stopped it and said something which, for want of a 

 microphone, I did not hear, and hurried on. The second 

 ant made straight for the centipede and found it without any 

 trouble. Now nothing can be plainer than that the first ant 

 told the second where to go. " Glorious windfall ! Dead 

 leviathan about two miles from here. Keep straight on till 

 you come to a three-cornered pebble, then turn to the left 

 and you will come upon three grains of sand and a straw. 

 Climb the straw and you will see it. It is big enough to be 

 seen a mile away." Well, the second ant, when it had 

 found the centipede, did not hurry home. It just sat down 

 and waited till the first one returned, with a vast gang of 

 labourers ; then each seized a leg of the centipede, and soon 

 the stupendous mass was moving along merrily. 



But not only has each species of ant a language in which 



