Friends and Foes 309 



an agriculturist on her own account, and the only one 

 in the animal world, so far as we know. She is no 

 more an enemy to vegetation, therefore, than the 

 farmer who cuts down * bush * that he may grow 

 wheat, for she does a precisely similar thing. 



It is unfortunate for the farmer, of course, when her 

 * bush ' chances to be his corn or sweet potatoes, 

 which she cuts down as ruthlessly as he does scrub ; 

 or when she decides that his young fruit-trees must be 

 stripped of their leaves because they keep off too much 

 of the sunshine from her domain. But she does not 

 plunder his crops for food, and she does grow and tend 

 and reap crops of her own as regularly and carefully as 

 he does himself. 



For this purpose, at least partly, she makes circular 

 clearings some ten or twelve feet in diameter, some- 

 times in rough, wild pasture, sometimes in the middle 

 of the farmer's fields; and she clears away his cotton, 

 or corn, just as impartially as she does the weeds, for 

 to her they are weeds. Considering her size, her 

 labours are truly herculean, for she cuts through, with 

 her teeth, stems as thick as a thumb ; and by dint of 

 sawing, twisting, pulling, biting, she clears everything 

 away, no matter how rank the growth. And this is 

 not all, for the space is not only cleared once, but kept 

 clear till the * ant-corn ' has ripened — a matter in- 

 volving no small labour where it is surrounded by a 

 dense growth of weeds always ready to encroach. 



The crop consists of a tall, yellowish grass, and not 

 so much as a blade of any other species is allowed 

 among it. It ripens about the end of June, when the 

 seed is cut from the stalk and carefully stored. That 

 which falls of itself to the ground is not harvested, and 



