FOREST AND STREAM. 
peace and safety of the citizen, and for this reason is the 
subject of special and stringent legislation. 
The carrying of a pistol, or any other deadly weapon, 
is prohibited by the law of every State in the Union, and 
there are daily arraignments of individuals charged with 
carrying and using weapons, resulting in many con- 
victions, with punishment more or less severe; and 
yet gun plays are given full leave and license to portray 
the most realistic scenes imaginable of violence and 
bloodshed, upon the stage, with every attribute of truth, 
honor, and even decency, subservient to the omnipresent 
pistol. 
Ten years ago an oath on the stage was whispered, 
merely indicated by a covert indirection, or else was an 
obsolete expletive, meaningless, and with more sound 
than substance; but in the modern gun play the profanity 
is fearfully in evidence, and is always applauded. 
Broad vulgarity and at times positive obscenity of 
speech also occur in these plays, and invariably these 
are applauded to the echo, by the habitues. 
Our goals are full of men and youth who have been 
frequenters of the theaters where "these plays have been 
exhibited, and many of them, if given their liberty to- 
day, would spend the first money they could spare from 
their necessities for a sitting at one. 
Radical reform along this line is a crying need. The 
gun play, with its demoralizing example and immoral 
tendencies, should be legislated out of existence promptly 
and effectually. 
The man on the stage has no more license in the mat- 
ter of carrying deadly weapons than have other men, nor 
has he the right to teach — by example — as he does, a de- 
fiance of the law. Lewis Hopkins, 
— <?^— 
Intelligence of Wild Things, 
BY HERMIT. 
The Crow. 
(Continued from page 265.) 
I have added to my knowledge of the young crow, 
referred to in my first article. I am now convinced that 
this youngster is not of sound mind. He utters the cry 
of a young crow, when calling for food, which shows 
that he has not acquired the crow language. The only 
exception to this rule is when he calls to me. Some- 
how he has been taught by other crows that my name 
is "Caw-caw," and whenever he sees me he calls out in 
an eager manner. Sometimes he steals away from his 
mates and comes to my dooryard. The crows hear him 
when he calls to me and rush in and with loud cries 
drive him into the woods. 
There is another crow that "gobbles" and I have made 
up my mind that he is unable to utter the common cries 
of other crows. 
A few j r ears ago I followed this crow for two days. 
Not a sound escaped him other than the loud gobble. 
After this I saw many things that convinced me that 
the crow was deaf and dumb. 
There is another deaf and dumb crow about four miles 
away. He is located on the line between Gloucester and 
Esser. 
Five years ago a Mr. Clark, a resident of Gloucester, 
told me about the last named crow. Mr. Clark was 
ninety years of age. He was as straight and vigorous as 
a young man, and possessed a fund of amusing stories. 
He told how, when he went to his farm and found the 
crows pulling up his grain, the sentinel would call out 
"Clark, dark, dark," and then another crow would cry, 
"Bother-the-luck, bother-the-luck." 
In the winter months the crows visit the clam flats 
for food. A sentinel is sent down to the woods, over- 
looking the flats, and when the tide goes out, this sen- 
tinel returns and flying in a circle above the pines, calls 
out "caw-caw-caw," continuing the cry until he has com- 
pleted the circuit. 
This cry can be translated in to "come-come-come," or 
"' clams-clams-clams." Anyhow the crows understand 
and a sentinel flies to a pine tree ust south of my cabin. 
Another drops into a large oak tree on the hill looking 
to the east. Two more sentinels seek trees for observa- 
tion, one near the clam flats. The crow near the flats 
calls out "caw-caw-caw," which means "all is well." The 
next sentinel takes up the call, and thus it is carried to 
crows in the woods. The latter fly to the sentinel trees, 
if there is nothing to create fear. If a man should ap- 
proach either sentinel with, or without a gun, the danger 
cry would be rapidly uttered. This cry "cur-cur-cur" is 
usually quickly repeated and the crows rush to the shel- 
ter of the pines. 
Like human beings, crows have courts of justice. The 
jury, however, tries, convicts and punishes the criminal. 
Sometimes I have witnessed these trials. Once, while 
sitting under a sentinel tree, I saw six crows flying 
across the swamp, headed for the tree. Five of the 
crows were striking at one crow that was evidently try- 
ing to escape. When the crows reached the tree the 
criminal was surrounded by the others. This was not 
to his liking and he flew to an upper limb. One of the 
crows said something to him and he answered in a loud v 
defiant tone. For ten minutes the trial went on. Each 
crow had something to say while the criminal replied 
in the most aggressive style. At last the criminal 
seemed to be convicted, when he flew away with a string 
of caws, that doubtless in crow language meant "go to 
hades the whole blooming lot of you." One old crow 
shouted Car-r-r-r-r, as much as to say, "I told you so." 
The crows followed the criminal, and as they disappeared 
in the deep woods beyond the swamp, they were making 
it extremely warm for him. I do not know how the mat- 
ter ended, but I am satisfied that the bad crow received 
severe punishment. 
I have read in books relating to natural history, that 
crows are in the habit of playing games. I can only say 
from my observations that crows take life very seri- 
ously. I have seen nothing like play in a life time of 
careful watching. 
Courting is a serious business. The male rushes at his 
intended, mauling her, while he utters loud cries, in 
which he rolls his r's in the most approved stage style. 
When he has forced the young lady crow to say "yes," 
they are mated for life. Then he becomes tender in 
his attentions. He will sit for a half hour or more 
before his mate, singing the crow love song. It is not 
much of a song, but it is the best he can do. He draws 
his beak down to his breast while he utters liquid notes 
that remind one of the suction of a wooden pump. 
This spring the kingbirds returned to Bond's hill and 
I hope they will nest nearby. If they do the crows and 
hawks will have to walk Spanish. Last season the crows 
destroyed many birds' nests in the woods in the imme- 
diate vicinity of my cabin. One pair of robins had four 
nests looted. Only two towhee buntings were reared 
and two nests of the chestnut-sided warbler escaped. 
The destruction in so small an area shows how fearful 
the havoc must be on a large territory. 
If the kingbirds do not rest nearby I shall continue 
the study of the crow at the muzzle of the shotgun, in 
defense of the song birds that inhabit the woods 
around me. 
Those that praise the crow can have but little know- 
ledge of his destructive habits. 
I sleep in the open air eight months of the twelve and 
the crows awake me each morning before it is fairly 
light. For a half hour or more they keep up a conver- 
sation in the crow language. They seem to be debating 
and laying out a programme for the day. 
They must have a crow almanac, for they know all 
about the tides.- If the tide is out in the morning they 
seek the clam flats without a report from a scout. At 
this early hour they make the flight without posting 
sentinels. If it is high water they go down to the sea- 
shore to see what the tide has brought in. 
It is generally supposed that crows utter but one note, 
or cry, a loud caw. The fact is the crow language is 
not confined to one note, for "ker" is heard as frequently 
as "caw." 
The cries of the crow can be modulated to express 
many of the feelings common to the human voice. 
In the old times, when I killed crows right and left, I 
often threw dead birds into my cabin dooryard. If a 
crow passed over, his sharp eyes always discovered his 
dead comrades and he would immediately circle above 
the bodies, repeating several times a cry, "ker-r-r-r," 
which most vividly expressed horror and indignation. 
Ants and their Nests. 
The warm weather is now bringing to the surface 
from the drying ground and stirring to renewed activity 
the ants, which all through the" winter have been qui- 
escent in their snug underground homes. Perhaps no 
insect group is more interesting than this one, or has 
been so much studied. Huber, Lubbock, McCook, Forel 
and others have devoted much time and infinite patience 
to the investigation of the habits of these most inter- 
esting creatures, and extraordinary accounts are given 
of the intelligence which they display. Indeed, if we may 
credit all that is told of them, they stand far higher in 
the intellectual scale than many birds and mammals. 
As is, of course, well understood, the ants constitute a 
great family of the insect order Hymenoptera, which 
includes also the bees and the wasps. Ants are found 
practically over the whole earth. There are more than 
2,000 known species and about 150 genera. They live 
in societies and the ants of any species may appear in 
several shapes — a condition which is called polymorph- 
ism. In other words, every species consists not only of 
females, usually winged, and males, usually winged, 
which differ extremely from each other in their whole 
structure, but also of other individuals without wings, 
which are undeveloped females and are called "work- 
ers." In certain species also, the "workers" are sub- 
divided into two classes, quite different in structure, 
which are known as workers and soldiers. Here the 
workers are laborers, while the soldiers, as their name 
implies, are fighters. 
Among the most prominent and readily noticeable 
things about ants are their nests. These have been stud- 
ied by many writers, whose interesting observations have 
been recorded in many publications. 
While most of the male and female ants have wings, 
this is not always the case, but at least one of the sexes 
is always winged. New colonies of ants are almost 
invariably founded by a pregnant female, or by several 
of them, and these females live according to Lubbock's 
experiments from 8 to 12 years; at all events a long 
time, and remain prolific from a single fecundation. 
They thus become mothers of the whole ant colony, 
which thus lasts for many years and does not die every 
year as do the colonies of the wasps. From this fact it 
results that the ants must have permanent homes, and, as 
might be supposed, these nests display great_ variety. 
From time to time ants may change their location. 
They may move away from one home and build another. 
Beside this many species of ants send out colonies. 
They may build new nests at a distance from their 
dwellings, without leaving the old nests. In this way 
colonies arise whidi contain numerous nests, and re- 
semble, as Huber has said, the cities of the Great 
Empire. Dr. Forel counted 200 immense nests of a 
European species of ant standing close together, and 
Mr. McCook counted as many as 1,600 still larger nests 
of a related species in the Allegheny Mountains. It is 
estimated that these so-called ant-kingdoms have a popu- 
lation of from 200,000,000 to 400,000,000 inhabitants, all 
forming a single community and living together in active 
and friendly intercourse, yet on hostile terms with the 
colonies of other ant-kingdoms, even though of the 
same species. Certain ants, which live in trees, form 
similar extensive kingdoms, by occupying the trees of 
the same forest. 
Beside this, ants are . known to frequently extend 
their cities or camps by digging covered or subterranean 
passages to outlying stations, which they may establish. 
In such places they may keep numbers of the aphides 
which serve them as milch cows, and they may use them 
for other purposes. 
Among the ants there appear to be a great variety of 
dispositions. Some are courageous and warlike and 
build nests that are in the open and discovered easily, 
while others are timid and hide themselves and their 
nests away, striving to escape observation. There are 
some which are blind or half blind and live always below 
ground, and others which see well and do not shun the 
light 
The bees and the wasps — relatives of the ants — build 
as is well known, nests of surprising regularity, and 
some writers even declared that they have discovered 
that a cell hexagonal in shape is that which can be built 
with the greatest economy of room. The nests of the 
ants, however, are very different from those of these 
relatives in their irregularity and want of uniformity. In 
other words, while the bees build in a certain fashion, 
and apparently cannot build in any other way, the ants 
adapt themselves to their surroundings and take advan- 
tage of all the favorable situations found among these, 
A rough enumeration of some of the forms of ants' nests 
is made by Dr. August Forel, a Swiss naturalist, in a 
paper published some years ago. 
Many ants take advantage of existing cavities, using 
clefts and crevices in the rock, or the space between 
stones. They wall up and barricade the entrance to the 
cleft with sand, pebbles and other things easily trans- 
ported, they divide the interior into chambers and leave 
only a few doors, through which to pass in and out. 
Among the ants which do this, some species have 
adapted themselves to the dwellings of man, occupying 
cracks in the wall, and not only have safe, warm homes, 
but often have access to food in the house and become 
nuisances to the housewife. 
Other ants live in hollows in vegetable growths, as in 
cavities. in galls, in holes excavated by beetles in bark, 
under bark of trees, in hollow fruits, in the stems of 
plants, hollowed out naturally or by the ants, and there 
is an example of a very small ant of India, which has 
its nest in the hollow space between the upper and lower 
surface of the leaves of a tree, the green part of which 
has been eaten out by a very small caterpillar. 
Nests of ants are most ordinariy built in the earth. 
Sometimes they are excavated to a considerable depth, 
the sand and earth taken from the passages and cham- 
bers being brought to the surface and thrown away. 
Sometimes this excavated material is piled up in high 
heaps which we call anthills. On the other hand, some- 
times the anthills of the nests are formed of rejected 
food particles, as in the case of an African ant, the open- 
ings of whose nests are surrounded by the rejected hulls 
of certain seeds. 
Some species of ants dig passages, which are very deep, 
and sometimes lead to the roots of plants where root 
plant lice are feeding. Some species have very large 
chambers or granaries, in which they store the seeds 
that they have gathered, or perhaps store the leaves cut 
from trees, where they grow the fungus which they feed 
on. There are some predatory ants in India, which 
carry on systematic underground hunts after termites, 
pursuing them in their own passages. 
Nothing is more common than to find under a stone, 
just turned over, a disturbed community of ants, rushing 
about excitedly through the passages that have been dug 
just beneath the stone. Often one may see lying there 
the eggs, which the workers hasten to bear away to a 
place of safety. Under this stone, which serves as a 
roof and which warms the nest, is the upper story of 
the ant home, but there are other passages and cham- 
bers at a low level. 
Some ants build houses whose walls are made of an 
earth mortar above ground. Such structures are built 
among grass or plants, the stems of which serve to hold 
it up. Dr. Forel believes that the purpose of these 
above ground houses — which are commonly built in 
spring — is to enable the ants to expose themselves to the 
rays of the sun, and to get warm at a time when the 
weather is damp and cold. 
In Coloado there is a seed" harvesting ant which cov- 
ers the upper surface of its earthen mound with a mosaic 
of small white stones. These are laid with great regu- 
larity on the outside of the house. 
There are some ants who are carpenters sufficiently 
expert to drive tunnels into hard wood, where they make 
their homes. Some small, weak species have nests which 
open outward by a few small apertures, concealed by the 
roughnesses of the tree bark, and these small apertures 
are closed by the head of the soldier sentinel, who per- 
mits only friends to enter. The head of this soldier is 
large, and so shaped that it is an absolute stopper to 
the hole, which no one can pass without his consent. 
Moreover, the front end of the head which blocks the 
hole, is so smooth that an enemy could get no hold on it. 
There are certain ants which combine nests of earth 
and wood. In trunks of trees or stems of any plants 
chambers may be made by earth, or ants may have their 
homes in the ground, but may cover their nests with 
great piles of vegetable matter. These piles may be pro- 
tections against eold and wet. 
Certain ants make nests of pasteboard, not unlike the 
material from which the wasp or the hornet constructs 
its well known hanging nests. Other nests are woven 
of a peculiar silk thread, which seems to come from a 
viscous substance secreted by glands the same which 
secrete the glue used in making earth mortar or the 
pasteboard just referred to. Just how it is that these 
ants perform this spinning is as yet uncertain. 
The- mutual services performed for each other by two 
organisms living together, which organisms are so de- 
pendent upon one another that neither can thrive well 
without the other, constitute symbiosis or living to- 
g-erne/. Such relations constantly exist in nature, and 
amoiig the ants, we see many examples of it. One of 
the most interesting of these is in the case of an ant 
known as Azteca, which lives in the hollow trunks of a 
certain species of Cecropia. The relations between the 
insect and the plant are these. 
The pregnant females of Asieca instabatis seek out for 
themselves a certain very thin and soft spot in the trunk 
of the Cecropia, which always has the same situation in 
every internode, bore into it and thus get into the hoi- 
