first rank of scientific naturalists, but I must say, to my depraved 

 taste, he is the most amusing, and this is what he says of Ants. 



" It seems to me that in the matter of intellect the ant must be 

 a strangely overrated bird. During many summers now I have 

 watched him, when I ought to have been in better business, and I 

 have not yet come across a living ant that seemed to have any more 

 sense than a dead one. 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 persuaded that the average ant is a sham. 

 I admit his industry, of course ; he is the hardest-working creature 

 in the world —when anybody is looking— but his leather-headedness 

 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 sort of use to himself or anybody 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 towards home, but in the opposite 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, 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, turns tail, and lugs it after him another moment, gets 

 madder and madder, then presently hoists it into the air and goes 

 tearing away in an entirely new direction ; comes to a weed ; it 

 never occurs to him to go aound 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 Heidelberg 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 off 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 pebbles 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 stumbles on his same booty again. He does not remem- 



