baird] OBSERVATION OF ANTS NEST 4 i 



begun one hundred and fifty years ago, when shortage of lumber 

 was threatening, was simply the policy to cut no more than was 

 produced, and to increase the production of the forests until they 

 should supply the needs of the nation. In seventy-five years the 

 amount increased threefold and the money value is ten times what 

 it was sixty years ago. 



We still have left 144,000,000 acres of forests. We have 

 scarcely more than begun to attack the problems of forestry. 

 Public sentiment must be created and directed. It becomes 

 necessary that the public schools assume a part of this work. The 

 more or less weakly sentimental talk about trees should give way 

 to a truthful study of trees, their recognition, their value in a 

 material way to the whole people, their right use and protection 

 With this sane teaching, there need be no fear that the true senti- 

 ment, deep-rooted in race experience, the heritage of us all, the 

 interest in trees and the love for them which leads us to seek our 

 inspiration and rest "among green trees", will ever lack expres- 

 sion. 



PUPIL'S OBSERVATION OF AN ANT'S NEST 



Reported by GRACE J. BAIRD, Instructor in Biology, High School, Urbana, III. 



Following is the report of one of the zoology students in 

 Urbana High School, where a nest of little brown ants was ob- 

 served. The ants were found by the class during one of their 

 field trips, and were transferred from the corn plot to a Lubbock 

 nest made according to the suggestion in the September number 

 of the Nature-Study Review. 



"The ants seem to need water, for they go to the sponge 

 soaked with it, and suck out the moisture, or carry away 

 small pieces having water in them, and they have made a rubbish 

 pile of the small pieces of sponge after using the moisture. They 

 seem to like sugar, for they will carry the grains away from the 

 pile, as if storing food in the nest. All these ants seem to be 

 workers. They are very industrious and keep their nest clean. 

 They evidently recognize the others around them, for they feel 

 of each other with their antennae, and they go in crowds to help 

 each other. They will crawl down near the water, and with 

 their first pair of legs wash their faces and antennae. They can- 

 not swim, but drown if they get into the water." 



