242 GO TO THE ANT 



viewed practically, is their total disregard of vested interests 

 in the case of house property. Like Mr. George and his 

 communistic friends, they disbelieve entirely in the principle 

 of private rights in real estate. They will eat their way 

 through the beams of your house till there is only a slender 

 core of solid wood left to support the entire burden. I 

 have taken down a rafter in my own house in Jamaica, 

 originally 18 inches thick each way, with a sound circular 

 centre of no more than 6 inches in diameter, upon which all 

 the weight necessarily fell. With the material extracted from 

 the wooden beams theyproceed to addinsultto injury by build- 

 ing long covered galleries right across the ceiling of your draw- 

 ing-room. As may be easily imagined, these galleries do not 

 tend to improve the appearance of the ceiling ; and it 

 becomes necessary to form a Liberty and Property Defence 

 League for the protection of one's personal interests against 

 the insect enemy. I have no objection to ants building 

 galleries on their own freehold, or even to their nationalising 

 the land in their native forests ; but I do object strongly 

 to their unwarrantable intrusion upon the domain of pri- 

 vate life. Expostulation and active warfare, however, are 

 equally useless. The carpenter-ant has no moral sense, 

 and is not amenable either to kindness or blows. On one 

 occasion, when a body of these intrusive creatures had con- 

 structed an absurdly conspicuous brown gallery straight 

 across the ceiling of my drawing-room, I determined to 

 declare open war against them, and, getting my black ser- 

 vant to bring in the steps and a mop, I proceeded to 

 demolish the entire gallery just after breakfast. It was 

 about 20 feet long, as well as I can remember, and perhaps 

 an inch in diameter. At one o'clock I returned to lunch. 

 My black servant pointed, with a broad grin on his intelli- 

 gent features, to the wooden ceiling. I looked up ; in 

 those three hours the carpenter-ants had reconstructed the 



