32 WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIEDS. 



traceable through, above, under, around, all impediments : 

 here the main road branches off, and is lost, or it ends at the 

 tree with many insects on its bark, or at some great deposit of 

 favorite food that has been found ; and all this pains and labor 

 have been expended in digging that road to secure the con- 

 venience of transportation ! 



Talk of your Simplon or your Erie Canal, or your hun- 

 dreds of miles of human railroads! Wonderful Instinct, 

 indeed ! 



Dig away the earth carefully, and look into that subterra- 

 nean city. Here are streets, galleries, arches and domes, 

 bridges, granaries, nurseries, walls, rooms of state aye, pal- 

 aces cells for laborers, all the features and fixtures, diverse 

 and infinite of a peopled city of humanity ! 



But see, a war has broken out with a neighboring city ! 

 Marvellous sight I The eager legions pour in a black flood 

 from the gates. The chief men and captains of the peo- 

 ple distinguished, not by plumes and stars, and orders, but 

 by their greater size, and the formidable strength of their 

 pincers. They are marshalled into bands they know the 

 strength of discipline and military science ! In one wide, 

 sweeping, unbroken line, they pour upon the enemy's town. 



The fight is desperate hand to hand pincer to pin- 

 cer ; for it is a battle for dear life liberty and larvae ! The 

 vanquished are dragged into slavery; the larvae carried 

 off and tenderly nourished by the conquerors, and when 

 they grow up are made helots of, hewers of wood and draw- 

 ers of water. 



Strangely elastic Instinct this ! It we combine, compare, 

 / deduce is not there something like combination, compari- 

 son, deduction, here ? 



The mocking bird is, in many respects, characterized by 

 the most remarkable sagacity. "We watched a pair of them 

 once build their nest in a low thorn bush, growing in what is 

 called a " sink-hole," in the West. This had once or twice been 

 filled with water by the heavy rains, but at long intervals. 



