82 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
traceable through, above, under, around, all impediments : 
here the main road branches o£P, and is lost, or it ends at the 
tree with many insects on its bark, or at some great deposit of 
favorite food that has been found ; and all this pains and labor 
have been expended in digging that road to secure the con- 
venience of transportation ! 
Talk of your Simplon or your Erie Canal, or your hun- 
dreds of miles of human railroads! Wonderful Instinct^ 
indeed ! 
Dig away the earth carefully, and look into that subterra- 
nean city. Here are streets, galleries, arches and domes, 
bridges, granaries, nurseries, walls, rooms of state — aye, pal- 
aces — cells for laborers, all the features and fixtures, diverse 
and infinite of a peopled city of humanity ! 
But see, a war has broken out with a neighboring city ! 
Marvellous sight ! The eager legions pour in a black flood 
from the gates. The chief men and captains of the peo- 
ple distinguished, not by plumes and stars, and orders, but 
by their greater size, and the formidable strength of their 
pincers. They are marshalled into bands — they know the 
strength of discipline and military science ! In one wide, 
sweeping, unbroken line, they pour upon the enemy's town. 
The fight is desperate' — ^hand to hand — pincer to pin- 
cer ; for it is a battle for dear life — ^liberty and larvae ! The 
vanquished are dragged into slavery; the larvae carried 
off and tenderly nourished by the conquerors, and when 
they grow up are made helots of, hewers of wood and draw- 
ers of water. 
Strangely elastic Instinct this ! It we combine, compare, 
deduce — is not there something like combination, compari- 
son, deduction, here? 
The mocking bird is, in many respects, characterized by 
the most remarkable sagacity. We watched a pair of them 
once build their nest in a low thorn bush, growing in what is 
called a " sink-hole," in the West. This had once or twice been 
filled with water by the heavy rains, but at long intervals. 
