A Fungle of Thyme. 13 
plunges into the wood. Coming to a broader leaf, 
which promises an open space, it is found to be hairy, 
and therefore impassable except with infinite trouble ; 
so the wayfarer endeavours to pass underneath, but has 
in the end to work round it. Then a breadth of moss 
intervenes, which is worse than the vast prickly hedges 
with which savage kings fence their cities to the ex- 
plorer, who can get no certain footing on it, but falls 
through and climbs up again twenty times, and bur- 
rows a way somehow in the shady depths below. 
Next, a bunch of thyme crosses the path: and 
here for alengthened period the ant goes utterly out of 
sight, lost in the interior, slowly groping round about 
within, and finally emerging in a glade where your 
walking-stick, carelessly thrown on the ground, bends 
back the grass and so throws open a lane to the 
traveller. Ina straight line the distance thus pain- 
fully traversed may be ten or twelve inches ; certainly 
in getting over it the insect has covered not less than 
three times as much, probably more—now up, now 
down, backwards and sideways, searching out a 
passage. 
As this process goes on from morn till night 
through the long summer's day, some faint idea may 
be obtained of the journeys thus performed, against 
difficulties and obstacles before which the task of 
crossing Africa from sea to sea is a trifle. How, for 
instance, does the ant manage to keep a tolerably 
correct course, steering straight despite the turns and 
