Ants and Butterflies. 163 



flit from work to play, all gaiety and good temper, and with 

 time to spare for a laugh and a gossip. 



Watch two ants meet on a stick, as I did the other day. 

 One had in tow half a fly, with a pair of legs and one wing 

 on it, and the trouble that these limbs gave the ant, catching 

 in everything as it went along, was perfectly exasperating to 

 look at. 



But the ant tugged and lugged at the thing with stupid, 

 dogged determination, and so, going round and round, 

 upside down and downside up, it slowly, painfully moved on 

 its silly way. The other had got a grass seed in its pincers, 

 and the husk was certainly one half of the total weight : yet 

 this " wise emmet " was going to haul this grain to its nest, 

 and right down to the bottom of it, then husk it and laboriously 

 drag the useless outside cover up to the front door again and 

 throw it away. 



Each of the two, in fact, was doing exactly twice as much 

 as there was any necessity for doing : was wasting half its 

 time and fifty per cent, of tissue in accomplishing a perfectly 

 useless task of industry. 



Well, they met on a narrow stick, and I could have 

 banged their two heads together for the way they went on. 

 In the first place, why were they on the stick at all? It 

 was very narrow, very crooked, and not steady. The ground 

 on either side was not only easy and open going, but a much 

 shorter way. However, there they were, and they met. 



The ant with the fly was going backwards, tug tug 

 tugging at its inconvenient treasure. The legs of the half- 

 fly hitched in every crevice of the wood, the wind kept on 

 catching its one wing, and nearly capsizing the ant. It was 

 just as if a man should try to drag, say, a dead camel through 

 a jungle with a balloon tied to its head, and a couple of fifty 

 pronged anchors tied to its tail. Travelling the opposite way 

 was the other ant with its grass seed in front of its face, so that 

 it could not see an inch before it. And so the two collided. 



