GO TO THE ANT 241 



Brunei on his own ground into the proverbial cocked hat, 

 both for depth and distance. 



Within doors, in the tropics, ants are apt to put them- 

 selves obtrusively forward in a manner little gratifying to 

 any except the enthusiastically entomological mind. The 

 winged females, after their marriage flight, have a disagree- 

 able habit of flying in at the open doors and windows 

 at lunch time, settling upon the table like the Harpies in 

 the /Eneid, and then quietly shuffling off their wings one 

 at a time, by holding them down against the table-cloth 

 with one leg, and running away vigorously with the five 

 others. As soon as they have thus disembarrassed them- 

 selves of their superfluous members, they proceed to run 

 about over the lunch as if the house belonged to them, 

 and to make a series of experiments upon the edible 

 qualities of the different dishes. One doesn't so much 

 mind their philosophical inquiries into the nature of the 

 bread or even the meat ; but when they come to drowning 

 themselves by dozens, in the pursuit of knowledge, in the 

 soup and sherry, one feels bound to protest energetically 

 against the spirit of martyrdom by which they are too pro- 

 foundly animated. That is one of the slight drawbacks 

 of the realms of perpetual summer ; in the poets you see 

 only one side of the picture the palms, the orchids, the 

 humming-birds, the great trailing lianas : in practical life 

 you see the reverse side the thermometer at 98. the 

 tepid drinking-water, the prickly heat, the perpetual 

 languor, the endless shoals of aggressive insects. A lady 

 of my acquaintance, indeed, made a valuable entomologi- 

 cal collection in her own dining-room, by the simple process 

 of consigning to pill-boxes all the moths and flies and 

 beetles that settled upon the mangoes and star-apples in 

 the course of dessert. 



Another objectionable habit of the tropical ants, 



