242 
NATURE NOTES 
memory and methods of Gilbert White. Reference was then 
made to the fact that in the first years of the Society’s existence 
much interest was evinced by its members in the subject of the 
preservation of our indigenous flora, and that circumstances have 
of late made this branch of the Society’s work again prominent. 
In the discussion that followed the speakers were unanimous in 
the opinion that active measures should be taken to stop the 
threatened extermination of rare and beautiful wild plants. 
The Association of Economic Biologists. — The inaugural 
meeting of this new Association of workers in economic biology, 
was held at the rooms of the Linnaean Society on November 8. 
Professor Theobald, the well-known entomologist, was elected 
President, Mr. Herbert Stone, author of the latest work on the 
timbers of commerce, Treasurer, and Mr. Walter E. Collinge, 
the malacologist, of the University of Birmingham, Secretary. 
The next meeting is to take place in Birmingham during Easter 
week, 1905. 
THE LIFE OF AN ANT. 
PIE bee deserves all the eloquence that Maeterlinck has 
lavished upon her, but the ant is the greater insect, 
as Solomon told us centuries ago. He is the Roman 
of the insect world, while the bee might be regarded 
as the Greek, if she had only a little more sense, and a keener 
intelligence. 
The ant is essentially an organiser and a conqueror, and 
provides his food in the harvest. He takes account of more 
things than his own hill, too. Bees carry on no campaigns as 
ants do, they plan no great conquests and expeditions, nor have 
they the notions of empire and world power that the ant 
possesses. 
A well-known scientist once stated how, on the brown hills 
surrounding the famous old city of Toledo, in Spain, he saw an 
army of ants with banners, crossing a dusty road. They 
literally carried banners — sprays of dry grass, apparently — 
which waved above their serried ranks, and in that place of 
famous battles, of memories of Spanish chivalry and of the 
fierce wars between Moor and Goth, the spectacle thus pre- 
sented was like a phantasmagoria of past glories, passing before 
his eyes in miniature. 
Just what they were about it was difficult to say. Perhaps 
they were in quest of a new country in which to settle, moving 
with all their emblems, jealously guarding their household gods. 
But there, in an endless column, they filed out of the grassy 
forest on the other side, tramping steadily onward with their 
pennons afloat, and their van-guard and rear-guard in line (mili 
tary formation) advancing in the direction of Toledo, as if they 
