Books: The Junior Classics Volume 8

S >> Selected and arranged by William Patten >> The Junior Classics Volume 8

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Solomon was, so far as we yet know, quite correct in describing
ants as having "neither guide, overseer, nor ruler." The so-called
queens are really mothers. Nevertheless it is true, and it is
curious, that the working ants and bees always turn their heads
towards the queen. It seems as if the sight of her gives them
pleasure. On one occasion, while moving some ants from one nest
into another for exhibition at the Royal Institution, I
unfortunately crushed the queen and killed her. The others,
however, did not desert her, or draw her out as they do dead
workers, but on the contrary carried her into the new nest, and
subsequently into a larger one with which I supplied them,
congregating round her for weeks just as if she had been alive. One
could hardly help fancying that they were mourning her loss, or
hoping anxiously for her recovery.

The communities of ants are sometimes very large, numbering even up
to 500,000 individuals; and it is a lesson to us, that no one has
ever yet seen a quarrel between any two ants belonging to the same
community. On the other hand, it must be admitted that they are in
hostility, not only with most other insects, including ants of
different species, but even with those of the same species if
belonging to different communities. I have over and over again
introduced ants from one of my nests into another nest of the same
species, and they were invariably attacked, seized by a leg or an
antenna, and dragged out.

It is evident therefore that the ants of each community all
recognize one another, which is very remarkable. But more than
this, I several times divided a nest into two halves, and found
that even after a separation of a year and nine months they
recognized one another, and were perfectly friendly; while they at
once attacked ants from a different nest, although of the same
species.

It has been suggested that the ants of each nest have some sign or
password by which they recognize one another. To test this I made
some insensible. First I tried chloroform, but this was fatal to
them; and as therefore they were practically dead, I did not
consider the test satisfactory. I decided therefore to intoxicate
them. This was less easy than I had expected. None of my ants would
voluntarily degrade themselves by getting drunk. However, I got
over the difficulty by putting them into whisky for a few moments.
I took fifty specimens, twenty-five from one nest and twenty-five
from another, made them dead drunk, marked each with a spot of
paint, and put them on a table close to where the other ants from
one of the nests were feeding. The table was surrounded as usual
with a moat of water to prevent them from straying. The ants which
were feeding soon noticed those which I had made drunk. They seemed
quite astonished to find their comrades in such disgraceful
condition, and as much at a loss to know what to do with their
drunkards as we are. After a while, however, to cut my story short,
they carried them all away: the strangers they took to edge of the
moat and dropped into the water, while they bore their friends home
into the nest, where by degrees they slept off the effects of the
spirit. Thus it is evident that they know their friends even when
incapable of giving any sign or password.

This little experiment also shows that they help comrades in
distress. If a wolf or a rook be ill or injured, we are told that
it is driven away or even killed by its comrades. Not so with ants.
For instance, in one of my nests an unfortunate ant, in emerging
from the chrysalis skin, injured her legs so much that she lay on
her back quite helpless. For three months, however, she was
carefully fed and tended by the other ants. In another case an ant
in the same manner had injured her antennae. I watched her also
carefully to see what would happen. For some days she did not leave
the nest. At last one day she ventured outside, and after a while
met a stranger ant of the same species, but belonging to another
nest, by whom she was at once attacked. I tried to separate them,
but whether by her enemy, or perhaps by my well-meant but clumsy
kindness, she was evidently much hurt and lay helplessly on her
side. Several others passed her without taking any notice, but soon
one came up, examined her carefully with her antennae, and carried
her off tenderly to the nest. No one, I think, who saw it could
have denied to that ant one attribute of humanity, the quality of
kindness.

The existence of such communities as those of ants or bees implies,
no doubt, some power of communication, but the amount is still a
matter of doubt. It is well known that if one bee or ant discovers
a store of food, others soon find their way to it. This, however,
does not prove much. It makes all the difference whether they are
brought or sent. If they merely accompany on her return a companion
who has brought a store of food, it does not imply much. To test
this, therefore, I made several experiments. For instance, one cold
day my ants were almost all in their nests. One only was out
hunting and about six feet from home. I took a dead bluebottle fly,
pinned it on to a piece of cork, and put it down just in front of
her. She at once tried to carry off the fly, but to her surprise
found it immovable. She tugged and tugged, first one way and then
another for about twenty minutes, and then went straight off to the
nest. During that time not a single ant had come out; in fact she
was the only ant of that nest out at the time. She went straight
in, but in a few seconds--less than half a minute--came out again
with no less than twelve friends, who trooped off with her, and
eventually tore up the dead fly, carrying it off in triumph.

Now the first ant took nothing home with her; she must therefore
somehow have made her friends understand that she had found some
food, and wanted them to come and help her to secure it. In all
such cases, however, so far as my experience goes, the ants brought
their friends, and some of my experiments indicated that they are
unable to send them.

Certain species of ants, again, make slaves of others, as Huber
first observed. If a colony of the slave-making ants is changing
the nest, a matter which is left to the discretion of the slaves,
the latter carry their mistresses to their new home. Again, if I
uncovered one of my nests of the Fuscous ant (Formica fusca), they
all began running about in search of some place of refuge. If now I
covered over one small part of the nest, after a while some ant
discovered it. In such a case, however, the brave little insect
never remained there, she came out in search of her friends, and
the first one she met she took up in her jaws, threw over her
shoulder (their way of carrying friends), and took into the covered
part; then both came out again, found two more friends and brought
them in, the same manoeuvre being repeated until the whole
community was in a place of safety. This I think says much for
their public spirit, but it seems to prove that, in F. fusca at
least, the powers of communication are but limited.

One kind of slave-making ant has become so completely dependent on
their slaves that even if provided with food they will die of
hunger, unless there is a slave to put it into their mouths, I
found, however, that they would thrive very well if supplied with a
slave for an hour or so once a week to clean and feed them.

But in many cases the community does not consist of ants only. They
have domestic animals, and indeed it is not going too far to say
that they have domesticated more animals than we have. Of these the
most important are Aphides on trees and bushes; others collect
root-feeding Aphides into their nests. They serve as cows to the
ants, which feed on the honey-dew secreted by the Aphides. Not
only, moreover, do the ants protect the Aphides themselves, but
collect their eggs in autumn, and tend them carefully through the
winter, ready for the next spring. Many other insects are also
domesticated by ants, and some of them, from living constantly
underground, have completely lost their eyes and become quite
blind.

When we see a community of ants working together in perfect
harmony, it is impossible not to ask ourselves how far they are
mere exquisite automatons; how far they are conscious beings. When
we watch an ant-hill tenanted by thousands of industrious
inhabitants, excavating chambers, forming tunnels, making
roads, guarding their home, gathering food, feeding the young,
tending their domestic animals--each one fulfilling its duties
industriously, and without confusion--it is difficult; altogether
to deny to them the gift of reason; and all our recent observations
tend to confirm the opinion that their mental powers differ from
those of men, not so much in kind as in degree.

THE KATY-DID'S PARTY

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

Miss Katy-did sat on the branch of a flowering azalea, in her best
suit of fine green and silver, with wings of point-lace from Mother
Nature's finest web.

Miss Katy was in the very highest possible spirits, because her
gallant cousin, Colonel Katy-did, had looked in to make her a
morning visit. It was a fine morning, too, which goes for as much
among the Katy-dids as among men and women. It was, in fact, a
morning that Miss Katy thought must have been made on purpose for
her to enjoy herself in. There had been a patter of rain the night
before, which had kept the leaves awake talking to each other till
nearly morning, but by dawn the small winds had blown brisk little
puffs, and whisked the heavens clear and bright with their tiny
wings, as you have seen Susan clear away the cobwebs in your
mamma's parlor; and so now there were only left a thousand
blinking, burning water drops, hanging like convex mirrors at the
end of each leaf, and Miss Katy admired herself in each one.

"Certainly I am a pretty creature," she said to herself; and when
the gallant Colonel said something about being dazzled by her
beauty, she only tossed her head and took it as quite a matter of
course.

"The fact is, my dear Colonel," she said, "I am thinking of giving
a party, and you must help me make out the lists."

"My dear, you make me the happiest of Katy-dids."

"Now," said Miss Katy-did, drawing an azalea-leaf towards her, "let
us see,--whom shall we have? The Fireflies, of course; everybody
wants them, they are so brilliant; a little unsteady, to be sure,
but quite in the higher circles."

"Yes, we must have the Fireflies," echoed the Colonel.

"Well, then,--and the Butterflies and the Moths. Now, there's a
trouble. There's such an everlasting tribe of those Moths; and if
you invite dull people they're always sure all to come, every one
of them. Still, if you have the Butterflies, you can't leave out
the Moths."

"Old Mrs. Moth has been laid up lately with a gastric fever, and
that may keep two or three of the Misses Moth at home," said the
Colonel.

"What ever could give the old lady such a turn?" said Miss Katy. "I
thought she never was sick."

"I suspect it's high living. I understand she and her family ate up
a whole ermine cape last month, and it disagreed with them."

"For my part, I can't conceive how the Moths can live as they do",
said Miss Katy with a face of disgust. "Why, I could no more eat
worsted and fur, as they do--"

"That is quite evident from the fairy-like delicacy of your
appearance," said the Colonel. "One can see that nothing so gross
and material has ever entered into your system."

"I'm sure," said Miss Katy, "mamma says she don't know what does
keep me alive; half a dew-drop and a little hit of the nicest part
of a rose-leaf, I assure you, often last me for a day. But we are
forgetting our list. Let's see,--the Fireflies, Butterflies, Moths.
The Bees must come, I suppose."

"The Bees are a worthy family," said the Colonel.

"Worthy enough, but dreadfully hum-drum" said Miss Katy. "They
never talk about anything but honey and housekeeping; still they
are a class of people one cannot neglect."

"Well, then, there are the Bumble-bees."

"Oh, I doat on them! General Bumble is one of the most dashing,
brilliant fellows of the day.

"I think he is shockingly corpulent," said Colonel Katy-did, not at
all pleased to hear him praised, "don't you?"

"I don't know but he _is_ a little stout," said Miss Katy;
"but so distinguished and elegant in his manners,--something
martial and breezy about him."

"Well, if you invite the Bumble-bees you must have the Hornets."

"Those spiteful Hornets,--I detest them!"

"Nevertheless, dear Miss Katy, one does not like to offend the
Hornets."

"No, one can't. There are those five Misses Hornet,--dreadful old
maids! as full of spite as they can live. You may be sure they will
every one come, and be looking about to make spiteful remarks. Put
down the Hornets, though."

"How about the Mosquitoes?" said the Colonel.

"Those horrid Mosquitoes,--they are dreadfully common! Can't one
cut them?"

"Well, dear Miss Katy," said the Colonel, "if you ask my candid
opinion as a friend, I should say _not_. there's young Mosquito,
who graduated last year, has gone into literature, and is
connected with some of our leading papers, and they say he
carries the sharpest pen of all the writers. It won't do to
offend him."

"And so I suppose we must have his old aunts, and all six of his
sisters, and all his dreadfully common relations."

"It is a pity," said the Colonel, "but one must pay one's tax to
society."

Just at this moment the conference was interrupted by a visitor,
Miss Keziah Cricket, who came in with her work-bag on her arm to
ask a subscription for a poor family of Ants who had just had their
house hoed up in clearing the garden-walks.

"How stupid of them," said Katy, "not to know better than to put
their house in the garden-walk; that's just like those Ants!"

"Well, they are in great trouble; all their stores destroyed, and
their father killed,--cut in two by a hoe."

"How very shocking! I don't like to hear of such disagreeable
things,--it affects my nerves terribly. Well, I'm sure I haven't
anything to give. Mamma said yesterday she was sure she didn't know
how our bills were to be paid,--and there's my green satin with
point-lace yet to come home." And Miss Katy-did shrugged her
shoulders and affected to be very busy with Colonel Katy-did, in
just the way that young ladies sometimes do when they wish to
signify to visitors that they had better leave.

Little Miss Cricket perceived how the case stood, and so hopped
briskly off, without giving herself even time to be offended. "Poor
extravagant little thing!" said she to herself, "it was hardly
worth while to ask her."

"Pray, shall you invite the Crickets?" said Colonel Katy-did.

"Who? I? Why, Colonel, what a question! Invite the Crickets? Of
what can you be thinking?"

"And shall you not ask the Locusts, or the Grasshoppers?"

"Certainly. The Locusts, of course,--a very old and distinguished
family; and the Grasshoppers are pretty well, and ought to be
asked. But we must draw the line somewhere,--and the Crickets! Why
it's shocking even to think of!"

"I thought they were nice, respectable people."

"O, perfectly nice and respectable,--very good people, in fact, so
far as that goes. But then you must see the difficulty."

"My dear cousin, I am afraid you must explain."

"Why, their _color_, to be sure. Don't you see?"

"Oh!" said the Colonel. "That's it, is it? Excuse me, but I have
been living in France, where these distinctions are wholly unknown,
and I have not yet got myself in the train of fashionable ideas
here."

"Well, then, let me teach you," said Miss Katy. "You know we go for
no distinctions except those created by Nature herself, and we
found our rank upon color, because that is clearly a thing that
none has any hand in but our Maker. You see?"

"Yes; but who decides what color shall be the reigning color?"

"I'm surprised to hear the question! The only true color--the only
proper one--is _our_ color, to be sure. A lovely pea-green is
the precise shade on which to found aristocratic distinction. But
then we are liberal;--we associate with the Moths, who are gray;
with the Butterflies, who are blue-and-gold colored; with the
Grasshoppers, yellow and brown;--and society would become
dreadfully mixed if it were not fortunately ordered that the
Crickets are black as jet. The fact is, that a class to be looked
down upon is necessary to all elegant society, and if the Crickets
were not black, we could not keep them down, because, as everybody
knows, they are often a great deal cleverer than we are. They have
a vast talent for music and dancing; they are very quick at
learning, and would be getting to the very top of the ladder if we
once allowed them to climb. But being black is a convenience,
--because, as long as we are green and they are black, we have a
superiority that can never be taken from us. Don't you see now?"

"Oh, yes, I see exactly," said the Colonel.

"Now that Keziah Cricket, who just came in here, is quite a
musician, and her old father plays the violin beautifully; by the
way, we might engage him for our orchestra."

And so Miss Katy's ball came off, and the performers kept it up
from sundown till daybreak, so that it seemed as if every leaf in
the forest were alive. The Katy-dids, and the Mosquitoes, and the
Locusts, and a full orchestra of Crickets made the air perfectly
vibrate, insomuch that old Parson Too-whit, who was preaching a
Thursday evening lecture to a very small audience, announced to his
hearers that he should certainly write a discourse against dancing,
for the next weekly occasion.

The good Doctor was as good as his word in the matter, and gave out
some very sonorous discourses, without in the least stopping the
round of gayeties kept up by these dissipated Katy-dids, which ran
on, night after night, till the celebrated Jack Frost epidemic,
which occurred somewhere about the first of September.

Poor Miss Katy, with her flimsy green satin and point-lace, was one
of the first victims, and fell from the bough in company with a sad
shower of last year's leaves. The worthy Cricket family, however,
avoided Jack Frost by emigrating in time to the chimney-corner of a
nice little cottage that had been built in the wood that summer.

There good old Mr. and Mrs. Cricket, with sprightly Miss Keziah and
her brothers and sisters, found a warm and welcome home; and when
the storm howled without, and lashed the poor naked trees, the
Cricket on the warm hearth would chirp out cheery welcome to papa
as he came in from the snowy path, or mamma as she sat at her
work-basket.

"Cheep, cheep, cheep!" little Freddy would say. "Mamma, who is it
says 'cheep'?"

"Dear Freddy, it is our own dear little cricket, who loves us and
comes to sing to us when the snow is on the ground."

So when poor Miss Katy-did's satin and lace were all swept away,
the warm home-talents of the Crickets made for them a welcome
refuge.

THE BEECH AND THE OAK

By Carl Ewald

It all happened long, long ago. There were no towns then with
houses and streets, and church steeples domineering over
everything.

There were no schools, for there were not many boys, and those that
there were learnt from their father to shoot with the bow and
arrow, to hunt the stag in his covert, to kill the bear in order to
make clothes out of his skin, and to rub two pieces of wood
together till they caught fire. When they knew this perfectly, they
had finished their education.

There were no railways either, and no cultivated fields, no ships
on the sea, no books, for there was nobody who could read them.

There was scarcely anything except Trees. But Trees there were in
plenty. They stood everywhere from coast to coast; they saw
themselves reflected in all the rivers and lakes, and stretched
their mighty boughs up towards heaven. They leaned out over the
shore, dipped their boughs in the black fen water, and from the
high hills looked out proudly over the land.

They all knew each other, for they belonged to a great family, and
were proud of it.

"We are all _Oak_ Trees," they said. "We own the land, and
rule over it."

And they were right. There were only a few human beings there in
those days, and those that there were were nothing better than wild
animals. The Bear, the Wolf, and the Fox went out hunting, while
the Stag grazed by the edge of the fen. The Field Mouse sat outside
his hole and ate acorns, and the Beaver built his artistic houses
by the river banks.

One day the Bear came trudging along and lay down at full breadth
under a great Oak Tree, "Are you there again, you robber?" said the
Oak, and shook a lot of withered leaves down over him.

"You should not squander your leaves, my old friend," said the
Bear, licking his paws. "That is all the shade you can give against
the sun."

"If you are not pleased with me, you can go," answered the Oak
proudly. "I am lord in the land, and whatever way you look you find
my brothers and nothing else."

"True," muttered the Bear. "That is just what is so sickening. I
have been for a little tour abroad, I may tell you, and am just a
little bit spoilt. It was in a land down towards the south--there I
took a nap under the Beech Trees. They are tall, slim Trees, not
crooked old things like you. And their tops are so dense that the
sunbeams cannot creep through them. It was a real pleasure there to
take a midday nap, I assure you."

"Beech Trees?" said the Oak inquisitively. "What are they?"

"You might well wish you were half as pretty as a Beech Tree," said
the Bear. "But I don't want to chatter any more with you just now.
I have had to trot a mile on account of a confounded hunter who
struck me on one of my hind legs with an arrow. Now I should like
to have a sleep, and perhaps you will be kind enough to leave me at
peace, since you cannot give me shade." The Bear stretched himself
out and closed his eyes; but he got no sleep _that_ time, for
the other Trees had heard his story, and they began chattering and
talking and rustling their leaves in a way never known in the wood
before.

"What on earth can those Trees be?" said one of them.

"It is, of course, a mere story; the Bear wishes to impose upon
us," said the other.

"What kind of Trees can they be whose leaves sit so close together
that the sunbeams cannot creep between them?" asked a Little Oak,
who was listening to what the big ones were talking about.

But by his side stood an old gnarled Tree, who gave the Little Oak
a clout on the head with one of his lowest boughs. "Hold your
tongue," he said, "and don't talk till you have something to talk
about. You need none of you believe a word of the Bear's nonsense.
I am much taller than you, and I can see far out over the wood. But
so far as ever I can see, there is nothing but Oak Trees."

The Little Oak was shamefaced, and held his tongue; and the other
big Trees spoke to one another in low whispers, for they had great
respect for the old one.

But the Bear got up and rubbed his eyes. "Now you have disturbed my
midday nap," he growled angrily, "and I declare that I will have my
revenge. When I come back I will bring some Beech nuts with me, and
I vow you will all turn yellow with jealousy when you see how
pretty the new Trees are."

Then he made off. But the Oaks talked the whole day long one to
another about the funny Trees he had told them about. "If they
come, I will kill them," said the Little Oak Tree, but directly
afterwards he got one on the head from the Old Oak.

"If they come, you shall treat them politely, you young dog," said
he. "But they will not come."

But in this the Old Oak was wrong, for they did come.

Towards autumn the Bear came back and lay; down under the Old Oak.
"My friends down there wish me to present their compliments," he
said, and he picked some funny things out of his shaggy coat. "Here
you may see what I have for you."

"What is it?" asked the Oak.

"That is _Beech_" answered the Bear--"the Beech nuts which I
promised you." Then he trampled them into the ground and prepared
to go back.

"It is a pity I cannot stay and see how angry you will be," he
growled, "but those confounded human beings have begun to press one
so hard. The day before yesterday they killed my wife and one of my
brothers, and I must see about finding a place where I can live in
peace. There is scarcely a spot left where a self-respecting Bear
can stay. Goodbye, you old, gnarled Oak Trees!"

When the Bear had shambled off, the Trees looked at one another
anxiously.

"Let us see what comes of it," said the Old Oak.

And after this they composed themselves to rest. The winter came
and tore all their leaves off them, the snow lay high over the
whole land, and every Tree stood deep in his own thoughts and
dreamt of the spring.

And when the spring came the grass stood green, and the birds began
singing where they left off last. The flowers came up in multitudes
from the earth, and everything looked fresh and gay. The Oak Trees
alone stood with leafless boughs.

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