A QUBBI^-LOOKING GROUND HOG. 31 



ficierit to successfully resist tlie efforts of two or es'en 

 three men to drag him from his hole. 



It seems difficult to believe that so large an ani- 

 mal subsists entirely upon ants, and yet the fact can 

 not be doubted. Indeed, nothing gives a, more graphic 

 idea of the innumerable hosts of ants and termites, or 

 so-called white ants, in the country the aard-vark in- 

 habits, than that, notwithstanding the enormous sup- 

 ply required by one of these animals even for a single 

 meal, the ants do not decrease in number. 



In certain sections of the country, not in the 

 regions of the grassy downs or where it is dry and 

 woody, but where the ground is too barren to sustain 

 anything more succulent than the so-called sour grass 

 (worthless for grazing purposes), gather the nest-build- 

 ing ants, and erect mounds that may well, at a little 

 distance off, be taken for the huts of the natives, 

 being for the most part from three to seven feet in 

 heigh.t and of much the same shape as the dwelling 

 places of the negroes. Like some enormous city of 

 native Africans, these hutlike hills cover the plain as 

 far as the eye can reach, a city of cities, for every 

 mound contains within itself thousands upon thou- 

 sands of inhabitants. 



Here at night, fatal as some deadly pestilence, 

 comes the silent aard-vark, breaks down the strongly 

 built walls of the marvelous habitations that are 

 capable of sustaining without injury the weight of a 

 buffalo, and attacks the dismayed inhabitants. Forth 

 stream the civic guard, the soldier caste, the defenders 

 of the city ; but how useless the powerful mandibles 



