PLUNDER AND SLAVE-CATCHING. 171 



follow it. In fact, " it is as if we had small dwarfs, about 

 eighteen inches to two feet high, harbouring in the walls 

 of our houses, and every now and then carrying off some 

 of our children into their horrid dens." 



The variation in size among ants is, by the way, as 

 well marked as it is among the higher animals, and the 

 proportions of the largest and smallest ant are much the 

 same as those of the elephant and the mouse. Some 

 ants, especially those belonging to the genus Componotus, 

 are as large as our hornets, while others, such as the 

 too-common House Ant, Myrmica molesta, is only the 

 fifteenth of an inch in length, and so slender that 

 its pale yellow body is hardly discernible if it be alone. 



Minute as are its individual dimensions, collectively 

 it is so formidable an insect that it has rendered houses 

 uninhabitable. The houses have had the floors relaid, 

 cement and porcelain tiles used wherever possible, but 

 the House Ants have retained possession of the premises. 



I have received many letters from persons whose 

 houses are infested with these ants, and have been asked 

 to suggest some mode of destroying them. Unfortu- 

 nately, I know of none. The passages to their nests are 

 so small that boiling water loses its heat long before the 

 few drops which can trickle through them can touch the 

 nest. Insect powders are equally useless, and sulphur 

 smoke has no terror for these insects. 



Another very human characteristic of the ant is that 

 they take in lodgers. 



There are many insects which are never seen except in 



