90 
A NATURALIST ON THE PROWL. 
the ringing grooves of change. So we judged it by its 
occasional blunders. When it failed to see the distinction 
between a wooden box and a dead tree, when it took in 
hand to convert the vegetable tissue of our books into 
soil, we saw and cursed it. But its stupendous work for 
the weal of the world went on all around us, and it never 
came into our minds to bless it. Is there any other such 
work going on in the world ? Withered leaves, old wood, 
dead bark, every used-up product of vegetable life is 
taken to pieces and carried off along wonderful covered 
ways and through underground channels to the workshops 
below. “To be eaten,” you will say. Yes, to be eaten. 
But eating does not annihilate matter. The eaters live 
and die underground, and nothing that goes down into 
those cellars comes up again until it comes in the sap of 
the trees to make the foliage of the forest. 
All this is true, beautifully true, and yet — I also am 
human — I cannot myself exorcise, the old feeling about 
the white ant. Whenever I see a great anthill dug to 
the foundations by a bear, and note that the savage 
epicure did not stop till he had found the chamber of 
the fat queen and sucked her down like an oyster, a 
genial sense of satisfaction wells up within me from some 
