BRUTE NEIGHBORS. 
249 
feelers and with only the remnant of a leg, and I know 
not how many other wounds, to divest himself of them.; 
which at length, after half an hour more, he accom¬ 
plished. I raised the glass, and he went off over the 
window-sill in that crippled state. Whether he finally 
survived that combat, and spent the remainder of his 
days in some Hotel des Xnvalides, X do not know; but I 
thought that his industry would not be worth much 
thereafter. I never learned which party was victorious, 
nor the cause of the war; but I felt for the rest of that 
day as if I had had my feelings excited and harrowed 
by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a 
human battle before my door. 
XHrby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have 
long been celebrated and the date of them recorded, 
though they say that Huber is the only modern author 
who appears to have witnessed them. “.iEneas Syl¬ 
vius,” say they, “ after giving a very circumstantial ac¬ 
count of one contested with great obstinacy by a great 
and small species on the trunk of a pear tree,” adds that 
“ ‘ This action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius 
the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an 
eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the bat¬ 
tle with the greatest fidelity/ A similar engagement 
between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Mag¬ 
nus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to 
have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those 
of their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This event 
happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Chris- 
tiern the Second from Sweden.” The battle which I wit¬ 
nessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years 
before the passage of Webster’s Fugitive-Slave Bill. 
Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle 
