122 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



of summer, while sitting on one of the innumerable 

 little green hillocks covering the common, it seemed 

 to me that I was in a vacant place where animal 

 life had ceased to be. Not an insect hummed hi 

 that quiet, still atmosphere, nor could I see one tiny 

 form on the close-cropped turf at my feet. Yet I 

 was sitting on one of their populous habitations. 

 Cutting out a section of the cushion-like turf ot 

 grass and creeping thyme that covered the hill and 

 made it fragrant, I. found the loose, dry earth within 

 teeming with minute yellow ants, and many of the 

 hillocks around were occupied by thousands upon 

 thousands of the same species. Indeed, I calculated 

 that in a hundred square yards at that spot the 

 ant inhabitants alone numbered not less than about 

 two hundred thousand. 



It is partly on account of this smallness and secretive- 

 ness of most of our insects of our seeing so little of 

 insect life generally except during the summer heats in 

 a few favourable localities, and partly an effect of our 

 indoor life, that we think and care so little about them. 

 The important part they play, if it is taught us, fades 

 out of knowledge : we grow in time to regard them as 

 one of the superfluities in which nature abounds despite 

 the ancient saying to the contrary. Or worse, as 

 nothing but pests. What good are they to us indeed ! 

 Very little. The silkworm and the honey-bee have 

 been in a measure domesticated, and rank with, though 

 a long way after, our cattle, our animal pets and poultry. 



