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THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



[December, 



ful for continued contributions, but we cannot 

 comprehend why the farmers of Lancaster 

 county should be so reticent on matters so 

 honorable to their heads and hearts. Mission- 

 aries do not wait imtil they are invited by 

 the benighted and the heathen. Slavery 

 would have hung around our necks as a mill- 

 stone until doomsday, had the emancipation- 

 ists waited until they were invited by those 

 who held their fellow men in bondage. Moral 

 darkness would have hung over the world for- 

 ever, if Christianity had waited for a personal 

 appeal. True charity, or neighborly love, in- 

 volves a going forth, and doing with our 

 might whatsoever we find for our hands to 

 do. To those who possess light and know- 

 ledge on useful subjects the injunction is al- 

 most imperative, to "go and do likewise." 

 We would like to have a self-appointed com- 

 mittee of contributors to the Farmer for 1882. 



STRATEGY VERSUS STRENGTH. 



The sand-hornet is the greatest villain that 

 flies on insect wings, and he is built for a pro- 

 fessional murderer. He carries two keen cime- 

 ters besides a deadly poisoned poniard, and is 

 armed throughout with an invulnerable coat 

 of mail. He has things all his own way ; he 

 lives a life of tyranny and feeds on blood. 

 There are few birds— none that I know of— 

 that care to swallow such a red-hot morsel. It 

 is said that not even the butcher bird hankers 

 after him. The toad will not touch him, seem- 

 in'' to know by instinct what sort of chain- 

 lightning he contains. Among insects this 

 hornet is the harpy eagle, and nearly all of them 

 are at his mercy. Even the cicada or drum- 

 ming harvest- fly, an insect often larger and 

 heavier than himself, is his very common vic- 

 tim. Considering these characteristics, it 

 was ot especial interest to witness such an in- 

 cident as I have here pictured, where one of 

 these huge tytants was actually captured and 

 overpowered by the strategy of three black 

 ants. 



I had left the meadow, and was ascending 

 a spur of the mountain by the edge of a pine 

 wood, when suddenly I espied the hornet in 

 question almost at my feet. He immediately 

 took to wing, and as he flew on ahead of me 

 I observed a long pendant object dangling 

 from bis body. The incumbrance proved too 

 great an obstacle for continuous flight, and he 

 soon dropped again upon the path, a rod or so 

 in advance of me. I overtook him, and on a 

 close inspection discovered a plucky black ant 

 clutching tigolly with its teeth upon the hind- 

 foot of its captive, while with its two hind- 

 legs it clung desparately to a long cluster of 

 pine needles which it carried as a dead- 

 weight. No sooner did the hornet touch 

 the ground than the ant began to tug 

 and yell for help. There were certainly 

 evidences to warrant such a belief, for a sec- 

 ond ant immediately appeared upon the scene, 

 emerging hurriedly from a neighboring thick- 

 et of pine-tree moss. He was too late, how- 

 ever, for the hornet again sought escape in 

 fli ght. But this attempt was even more futile 

 than the former, for that plucky little assail- 

 ant had now laid hold of another impediment 

 and this time not only the long pine needles, 

 but a small branched stick also, went swing- 

 ing through the air. Only a yard or so was 

 covered in this flight; and as the ant still 

 yelled for reinforcements, its companion again 

 appeared, and rushed upon the common foe 

 with such furious zeal that I felt like patting 

 him on the back. The whole significance of 

 the scene he had takcm in at a glance, and in 

 an instant he had taken a vise-like grip upon 

 the other hind-leg. Now came the final tug 

 of war. The hornet tried to rise, but this 

 second passenger was too much for him, he 

 could only buzz along the ground, dragging 

 his load after him, while his new assailant 

 clutched desperately at everything within its 

 reach, now a dried leaf, now a tiny stone,and 



even overturning an acorn cup in its grasp. 

 Finally, a small rouah stick the size of a 

 match was secured, and this proved the "last 

 straw." In vain were the struggles of escape. 

 The hornet could do no more than lift its body 

 from the ground. He rolled and kicked and 

 tumbled, but to no purpose, except to make it 

 very lively for his cantors; and the thrusts of 

 that lively dagger were wasted on the desert 

 air, for whether or not those ants knew its 

 searching propensities, they certainly man- 

 aged to keep clear of this busy extremity. 



How long this pell-mell battle would have 

 lasted I know not, for a third ant now ap-' 

 peared, and it was astonishing to see him; 

 with every movement of the hornet, he in 

 turn would lay hold of a third stif5k, and at 

 the same time clutch upon these pine needles 

 to add their impediment to the burden of Ids 

 own boay. 



Practically the ants had won the victory, 

 but what they intended to do with the floun- 

 dering elephant in iheir hands seemed a 

 problem. But it was to them only a question 

 of patience. They had now pinned their 

 victim securely, and held him to await assist- 

 ance. It came. The entire neighborhood 

 had been apprised of the battle, and in less 

 than five minutes the ground swarmed with 

 an army of reinforcements. They came from 

 all directions; they pitched upon that hornet 

 with terrible ferocity, and his complete de- 

 struction was now only a question of mo- 

 ments. — Harper^s Magazine for December. 



There are many difl'erent species of hornets, 

 wasps and ants in the world, and many dif- 

 ferent stories are told about their intelligence, 

 their ferocity, their strategy, as well as their 

 stupidity, but we are nearly always left in 

 blissful ignorance of the particular species that 

 figure so prominently in these stories. Now 

 here would be an excellent opportunity to in- 

 culcate the facts of natural history in one of 

 its most practical and useful forms, without 

 in the least abating its interest to the reader. 

 It would divest the subject of that "dryness " 

 and tediousness of which many complain, in 

 their attempts to study the details of scientific 

 literature. It would not detract from such a 

 narration as the above, if the reader had, at 

 the same time, been informed of the geo- 

 graphical locality of the event recorded, and 

 the species of the insects that were parties to 

 it. "Sand-hornet" and "black ant," are 

 terms too indefinite to convey to the mind of 

 an intelligent reader a correct idea of what or 

 who the "villian" and the strategists were, 

 or in what part of the country or the world 

 the thing occurred ; especially since in a dif- 

 ferent locality these insects might be known 

 by quite a different or a more familiar com- 

 mon name. 



We have here in Lancaster county a large 

 fossorial wasp or hornet, which, judging from 

 what we know of its habits, may be the insect 

 — or one nearly allied to it — alluded to in the 

 foregoing narrative. This is the Stizus grandis, 

 of Thomas Say, the female of which measures 

 three inches in aler expansion (from tip to tip 

 of the wings) and nearly two and a half inches 

 in length of body. The male is fully one-third 

 less. Colors, brown and yellow. The female 

 burrows in the hard ground, deposits her egg or 

 eggs therein, and then stocks her cell with the 

 body or bodies of the common " Harvest-fly " 

 (Cicada canicularis) locally called "summer- 

 locust," which she first in some manner para 

 lyses, and upon the body of this insect her 

 young subsist after they hatch from the egg. 

 But there are a number of other fossorial 

 wasps that have a similar habit in storing their 

 nests with other insects, especially with cater- 



pillars and spiders, so that one is not more 

 cruel in this respect than another. The "black- 

 ant" may be a species of i^orw!eica,perhaps F. 

 niger. Ants have long had the reputation of 

 being very intelligent, industrious and provi- 

 dent insects, and the history of some species 

 is simply wonderful ; but in some species at 

 least there is mucli in their habits that ap- 

 pears stupid, usele-ss and objectless. 



Mabk Twain, in his "Tramp Abroad," 

 takes off the ant in the following amusing and 

 somewhat significant style. " Now and then, 

 while we rested, we watched the laborious ant 

 at his work. I found nothing new in him— 

 certainly nothiug to change my opinion of 

 him. It seems to me that iu the matter of in- 

 tellect, the ant must be a strangely overrated 

 bird. During many summers, now, I have 

 watched him, when I ought to haye been in 

 better business. I refer to the ordinary ant, 

 of course ; I have had no experience of those 

 wonderful Swiss and African ones which vote, 

 keep drilled armies, hold slaves and dispute 

 about religion. Those particular ants may be 

 all that the naturalist paints them, but I am 

 pursuaded that the average ant is a sham. I 

 admit his industry, of c >urse ; he is the 

 hardest working creature in the world — when 

 anybody is looking — but his leather-headed- 

 ness is the point I make against him. He 

 goes out foraging, he makes a capture, and 

 then what does he do ? Go home ? No, 

 he goes anywhere but home. He doesn't 

 know where home is. His home may be only 

 three feet away — no matter, he can't find it. 

 He makes his capture, as I have said ; it is 

 generally something which can be of no use 

 to himself or an}'body else ; it is usually seven 

 times bigger than it ought to be ; he hunts 

 out the awkwardest place to take hold of it ; 

 he lifts it bodily up in the air by main force, 

 and starts; not homeward, but in the oppo- 

 site direction ; not calmly and wisely, but 

 with a frantic haste which is wasteful of his 

 strength ; he fetches up against a pebble, and 

 instead of going around it he climbs over it 

 backwards, dragging his booty after him, 

 and tumbles down on the other side, jumps 

 up in a passion, kicks the dust off his clothes, 

 moistens his hands, grabs his property 

 viciously, yanks it this way, then that, shoves 

 it ahead of him a moment, gets madder and 

 madder, then presently hoists it in the air 

 and goes tearing away in an entirely new 

 direction; he comes to a weed; it never occurs 

 to him to go around it ; no, he must climb it; 

 and he does climb it, dragging his worthless 

 property to the top— which is as bright a 

 thing to do as it would be for me to carry a 

 sack of flour from Heidelburg to Paris by way 

 of Strasburg steeple ; when he gets up there 

 he finds that that is not the place ; takes a 

 cursory glance at the scenery, and either 

 climbs down again or tumbles down, and 

 starts oft once more— as usual, in a new 

 direction. At the end of half an hour, he 

 fetches up within six inches of the place he 

 started from, and lays his burden down; 

 meantime he has been over all the ground for 

 two yards around, and climbed all the weeds 

 and pebl)les he came across. Now he wipes 

 the sweat from his brow, strokes his limbs, 

 and then marches aimlessly off in as violent 

 a hurry as ever. He traverses a good deal of 

 zig-zag country, and by and by tumbles on 



