SOME APRIL INSECTS. 207 
Every ant out of that enormous multitude may calculate 
on a certain average duration of life, setting aside risks 
from battle, birds, and such enemies. Microbes are un- 
likely to destroy her. Now this is a very extraordinary 
circumstance. In some manner the ants have found 
out a way of accommodating themselves to the facts of 
their existence; they have fitted themselves in with 
nature and reached a species of millennium. Are they 
then more intelligent than man? We have certainly 
not succeeded in doing this yet ; they are very far ahead 
ofus. Are their eyes, divided into a thousand facets, a 
thousand times more powerful than our most powerful 
nicroscopes, and can they see spores, germs, microbes, 
or bacilli where our strongest lenses find nothing? I 
have some doubts as to whether ants are really shut out 
of many flowers by hairs pointing downwards in a fringe 
and similar contrivances. The ant has a singularly 
powerful pair of mandibles: put one between your shirt 
and skin and try; the nip you will get will astonish you. 
With these they can shear off the legs or even the head 
of another ant in battle. I cannot see, therefore, why, 
if they wished, they could not nip off this fringe of hairs, 
or even sever the stem of the plant. Evidently they do 
not wish, and possibly they have reasons for avoiding 
some plants and flowers, which besides honey may 
contain spores—just as they certainly contain certain 
larvee, which attach themselves to the bodies of bees. 
Possibly we may yet use the ants or some other clever 
insects to find out the origin of the fatal parasite which 
devours the consumptive. Some reason exists for ima- 
gining that this parasite has something to do with the 
flora, for phthisis ceases at a certain altitude, and it is 
very well known that the floras have a marked line of 
demarcation. Up to a certain height certain flowers 
