A was an ant, who seldom stood still, And who made a nice nest in the side of a hill.
—Edward Lear.
“Sh!” said Ruth to the audience in general, for she wanted very much to hear what the ant had to say. The ant looked at her approvingly, and then said in a very solemn tone:
 
“My friends, there are ants and ants.”
 
“Who doesn’t know that?” snapped Mrs. Horntail.
 
“Yes, there are ants and ants,” repeated the speaker, not noticing the interruption. “There is the carpenter ant, for one. In the books she is called Componotis Pennsylvanicus, but never mind the name. It doesn’t seem to hurt her. She makes her nest in the trunks of trees, old buildings, logs, and places of that kind. You can see her on the leaf by Mrs. Saw Fly. She is large and black and——”
 
“Clean,” finished the carpenter ant, speaking for herself, and, without asking further permission, she on her legs and began to her tongue, and the fine and coarse combs on her legs, until she had gone over her whole body, smoothing out hairs, and getting rid of every atom of soil. Her toilet done, she gave a few strokes, then drew her fore legs through her mouth to clean the combs, and stretched herself with an air of satisfaction.
 
“I hope I haven’t interrupted the proceedings,” she said, “but if I am not clean I am . Now, Miss Lassius Brunens, please go on.”
 
“Miss who?” asked the little brown ant. “Oh, I see. You are calling me by the name the wise men give me. Well, I can stand it. To continue: I have mentioned the carpenter ant, and there are also the builders. Everybody knows their big hills. Then there are ants who keep slaves, and live under stones, and there are honey ants, who live in the South and use the of their own sisters to store honey in, and there are ants who sow seed and harvest it, and ants who cut pieces from green leaves and carry them as parasols, and soldier ants and——”
 
“Oh, give us a rest!” broke in Mrs. Horntail. “I am tired of ants.”
 
“Jealous, you mean,” said the little brown ant, “because you are not as wise as we are. Maybe you don’t know that whole books have been written about us and our clever doings. And men have spent years and years trying to study our ways. Now my family may not be the most wonderful, but I think it is the best known. We are the little ants who make the hill with a hole in the middle, which you so often see on sandy paths, or roadsides, or in dry fields.”
 
Ruth had edged closer, and was listening eagerly. Once more the little ant looked at her approvingly, then went on:
 
“Some people think our houses are queer, because they are dark. Of course we have no windows, only a door, and that is a hole in the roof. We like it so though, and you might be surprised if you could see our many wonderful galleries and . We made them all too. Dug them out of the earth, with our feet, throwing the soil out behind us, until the grew too deep. Then we had to take it out grain by grain. We made our pillars and supports also, using damp earth for . We don’t mind work, but we do mind human giants carelessly putting their feet in the middle of our hill and breaking in upon our private life. Those accidents will happen though, and our first thought is always the babies. They have no legs, and we have no hands, so we take them in our , and speed away with them to our underground chambers, where they will be safe. I have seen human babies carried when they did have legs. There is no excuse for that.
 
“Another thing, I know better than to call a human baby an egg, but, would you believe me, there are lots of people who think our babies are eggs. I have heard them called so. Now the reason we are so careful of our babies is because if there were no babies there would be no ants, and that brings me to the queen, for without her there would be no babies, because there would be no eggs, and babies always begin by being eggs. Only the queen lays eggs, remember that. She is important for this reason, and no other. She is not our ruler, as some suppose. In fact, we have no ruler. Ants do as they please, but they usually please to do what is best for the whole community. We have many queens, but they are not jealous of each other, as the bee queens are. They do not look like us workers. They are ever so much larger, and were hatched with wings. The males also have wings, but it really matters very little what they have. They are such a weakly set, and after they go abroad with the queens, when they take the one flight of their lives, they usually die, or something eats them, and so they are settled. It is the queens who interest us. Some of them we never see again. They go off somewhere and start new colonies, or something may eat them too, but those that come back either unhook their wings, or we do it for them. Then they settle down and begin to lay eggs. Their egg laying is not after the fashion of bee queens, who go to certain cells and leave eggs in them. The ants drop their eggs as they walk around.”
 
“Don’t they get lost?” asked Ruth.
 
“No, indeed. Workers follow and pick 168up every one. They take good care of those precious eggs, too, and when they hatch into helpless grubs, without wings or feet, our work begins in earnest. Every morning we carry them into the sunshine, and bring them down again at night. We fondle them too, and keep them clean by licking them all over. Then of course they must be fed, and, like other babies, they prefer milk.”
 
“And I know where you get the milk!” cried Ruth, all excitement. “It is from the aphides, isn’t it? The cicada told me. The aphides are his cousins. He doesn’t think so much of them, but he says you do.”
 
“Well, why shouldn’t we? They give us the most delicious milk. We have a fine of aphides now pasturing on a stalk of sweetbrier, and when Winter comes we will keep their eggs down in our nest, and put them on the sweetbrier in the Spring, so that the little aphides which hatch from them will have plenty to eat. Yes, and we may even 169build tiny sheds for them to keep their enemies from reaching them.”
 
“I wonder if you intend to talk all day?” broke in a sharp voice. “I sha’n’t wait another minute.”
 
It was not Mrs. Horntail, as Ruth thought at first, but Madame Vespa Maculata, or, in plain English, the white-faced hornet, and, as she was a lady, no one disputed her when she said:
 
“I am the largest and most of my family, and I build a nest whose and beauty make it a wonderful piece of insect architecture. It is proper that I should speak first, and I will speak right now.”
 
“Speak, by all means,” said the little ant. “I have quite finished.”
 
“Then move,” answered Vespa; “I need space.”
 
The whole audience gave it to her, including Ruth, who did not edge up close, as she did to the other speakers.
 
“It is this way,” she whispered to Belinda. “Those sharp people are very interesting, but it is better not to get too near until you know them quite well.”
 
“I suppose,” Madame Vespa was saying, “I suppose we can scarcely be called general favourites. We have a sting, you see, but, my friends, that was intended for laying eggs, and if we use it on people it is because they in our business. It is our way. We will sting those who bother us. Now, in our community—for we are social wasps—the female is unquestionably the better half. We have our rights and we insist on them. My mate was a good-for-nothing fellow, like the rest of them............