198 BRITISH FERTILITY. 



As lie rushed through and over their ranks, down 

 the side of the mound, those clinging to his legs were 

 caught hold of by others, till lines of four or five 

 ants were being jerked along by each of his six legs. 

 The infuriated beetle cleared the mound, and crawled 

 under leaves and sticks to sweep off his clinging ene- 

 mies, and finally seemed to escape them by burying 

 himself in the earth. Then I took one of those large, 

 black, shelless snails with which this land abounds, a 

 snail the size of my thumb, and dropped it upon the 

 nest. The ants swarmed upon it at once, and began 

 to sink their jaws into it. This woke the snail up to 

 the true situation, and it showed itself not without 

 resources against its enemies. Flee, like the beetle, 

 it could not, but it bore an invisible armor ; it began 

 to secrete from every pore of its body a thick, whitish, 

 viscid substance, that tied every ant that came in 

 contact with it, hand and foot, in a twinkling. When 

 a thick coating of this impromptu bird-lime had been 

 exuded, the snail wriggled right and left a few times, 

 partly sloughing it off, and thus ingulfing hundreds 

 of its antagonists. Never was army of ants or of 

 men bound in such a Stygian quagmire before. New 

 phalanxes rushed up and tried to scale the mass ; 

 most of them were mired like their fellows, but a 

 few succeeded and gained the snail's back ; then be- 

 gan the preparation of another avalanche of glue ; 

 the creature seemed to dwindle in size, and to nerve 

 itself to the work ; as fast as the ants reached him in 

 any number he ingulfed them ; he poured the vials 



