150 THE MOST GIFTED INSECT RACE. 



other ; possess enduring memories ; evince love, hatred, 

 and compassion; can play as well as work; will fight 

 with desperate courage in defence of their homes ; will 

 make war against neighbouring states and carry off their 

 prisoners into servitude; will nurse and tend their young : 

 will keep milch cattle in sheds built expressly for them : 

 will lay up stores of honey and grain ; will till the soil, 

 weed the ground, plant seeds, and reap the harvest ; and 

 lastly, when their brief life is over, even bury their 

 honoured dead with elaborate ceremony. 



How the little creatures can perform these tasks, some 

 of them being beyond the capacity of many a savage 

 tribe, and yet possess no brains, is one of the many 

 seeming paradoxes with which the study of animal life 

 teems. 



It is obvious that with insects possessing such a life- 

 history, even a tolerably full account would occupy 

 several large volumes. I shall therefore content myself 

 with giving a slight sketch of Ant Life, illustrating as 

 many as possible of the characteristics which have been 

 mentioned. 



As to locality, the ants are distributed over all the 

 warmer portions of the Globe. Cold they cannot endure, 

 though some of them, which inhabit tropical countries, 

 can run about at ease on ground so heated by the tropical 

 sunbeams, that a slice of raw meat would soon be cooked 

 if laid upon it. 



In fact, the ant tribes are dispersed round the earth in 

 a broad belt, thickest at the equator, and thinning off 



