ANIMAL NOTABLES 177 



They found the ground too hot, they ascertained the glass 

 was the cause, and they reasoned that moist earth was 



the remedy. 



J. LARDER. 



May 27, 1905. 



NOTE. It is hardly surprising that an insect whose 

 brain Darwin called the most wonderful speck of matter 

 in the universe, which keeps its own cows, entertains 

 guests, holds gymnastic contests, harvests grain, makes 

 clearings in the forest for agricultural purposes, bakes its 

 bread, constructs bridges (of its own body), stitches with 

 needle and thread, and runs its corporate life on the 

 principles of Mr. Sidney Webb should know how to damp 

 down the fever of the sun. The ant is indeed so highly 

 developed that it has even learned how to be a parasite, 

 not in the natural but the human sense. Two species 

 (Formica sanguinea and Polyergus rufescens) live like an 

 Oriental potentate on the labour of slaves (F. fusca, 

 F. cunicularia, and Lasius flavus), and in military strategy 

 and co-ordination even civilization has not much to teach 

 some ants. Who knows, too, whether they have not in 

 their midst corrupt statesmen, profiteers, lawyers, place- 

 hunters, tyrants, traitors, hypocrites, pedants, charlatans, 

 Laodicians, and ambitious minor poets? Unfortunately 

 for these promising developments, the militarists and 

 slave-dealers are becoming extinct ; our superiority does 

 not seem to be in danger. However that may be, what I 

 should like to ask Mr. Larder would be was the earth 

 already moist or did the ants themselves moisten it or 

 bring it from beneath the surface ? For ants act so 

 reasonably as they do chiefly by instinct. 



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