wheedles him out of his treasure solely by caresses, without the least demonstration of hostility.

Numerous other illustrations of intelligence as exhibited by these interesting creatures, might be adduced, but they come within the observation of every individual who is not immured in a dungeon, and even there, the cunning spider in the corner, might interest him, many an hour, while it would afford conclusive evidence, that even insects possess something so very like intelligence, that philosophers themselves are unable to detect the difference.

Having glanced at these civilized insects, the mind naturally turns to their distant relatives, the Ishmaelitish horde of wasps, with which every idea of carnage and rapine is generally associated. Carrying on an indiscriminate warfare, they are the terror of bee and fly; you may have seen a wasp, prowling for hours about the door of a bee-hive, in wait for some returning laborer, which he remorselessly falls upon and plunders of its treasure.

Here is the nest of the Vespa Nidulans, a foreign species:

These old paper-makers are skilled in architecture: who has not seen their gray nests hanging from the limbs of trees or attached to the posts of fences? During the period of building, they alternately sing, as if to cheer one another in their tasks. Many surprising indications of intelligence are on record, to which doubtless you can have access.

But the ant, the theme of song, the noble exemplication of everything industrious and affectionate; and that rears a pyramid in true Egyptian style, surpassing in comparative magnitude that of Cheops or Cephrenes, must not be omitted.

Taking the length of a laboring ant at one quarter of an inch, and the height of a laboring man at six feet, you perceive that a wall of one inch reared by the former, is equivalent to twenty-four feet erected by the latter, and two hundred and eighty-eight feet in the one, correspond to one foot in the other.

Here is a representation of the dwelling of the Termites or white ants; the artist has delineated a human figure to exhibit the comparative height:

Then bear in mind that the ant hills are frequently

ten feet in height, as upon the plains of Senegal, and man must heap four pyramids, like Ossa upon Pelion, or these, the wonders of the world, would suffer in comparison with those, the ordinary dwellings of his brother insect.

Whoever wishes to behold nations contending for a few feet of paltry dust; the brilliant hosts clad in polished armor of jet black, with shields like silver gleaming in the sunlight; to see the ground strewn with the dead and dying; to see prisoners captured and treaties made; to behold military evolutions, of which Bonaparte or Steuben never dreamed; let him be by, when the inhabitants of two neighboring hills engage in mortal combat. If you wish to behold affection which finds but few parallels among men; an affection which jealousy never abates, which time never enfeebles, which even death itself, never chills, you must look for it among these tenants of the hills; you may see them skipping and dancing for very joy, at the presence of a beloved object; you may see it strong in death, when a little band linger about the par. ticle of cherished dust, caressing and brushing it, as if they would reanimate the tiny form. Would you see memory among them, make an inroad upon their territory and bear off a portion of their citizens; retain them for four months, as has actually been done; then place your little colony in the vicinity of their native home, and their early friends will soon visit them, display every sign of recognition and affection, and bear them off in triumph to the hill; presently they will return, with a host of friends and relatives, and your hive will be wholly depopulated. Then there are tribes of slavers among the ants; regular land-pirates, who, indolent themselves, are continually making assaults upon their ash-colored neighbors, the negroes, and actually bearing them off into unwilling servitude, to do the drudgery of the nest.

In tropical countries you may see a legion of well discíplined slavers ambushed near a nest of their victims, and upon a given signal, rushing upon them, storming the fortress, which however is defended with desperate bravery; the old ants are not enslaved, but only the young; every part of the city is ransacked, and soon the assailants with their prisoners leave the depopulated city in loneliness; a few of the old yet remain, and now and then you may see one, mounted upon a plant, holding in its mouth its young, which it had succeeded in rescuing from the enemy. The prisoners gradually become attached to their conquerers, and labor assiduously, and willingly, for the convenience of their masters, which, to do them justice, are by no means cruel in their treatment of slaves. There is much, very much of interest connected with these proceedings, to which it would give me pleasure to allude, were it consistent with the design of this volume.

The most extraordinary statement, and perhaps to some incredible, yet remains to be made, and while it exhibits in a clear light, the intelligence of these insects, you may rely upon its truth, for such men as Huber and Latreille, to whom I am indebted for a knowledge of the fact, could have no motive in fabricating a fiction upon such a subject.

That they possess memory, affection, industry, and skill in military tactics, almost every one is prepared to admit; and perhaps the sceptical would not question the evidence of his senses, should he see them subjugating their neighbors which are blessed with a darker complexion, and carrying them into perpetual slavery; all this may be believed, but when I talk of a dairy among ants, of the milch cattle of what some are pleased to call contemptible bugs; of evident care in feeding their tiny herds; and more than all, of a process, verily like

MILKING, it is not strange that unenlightened credulity itself, might hesitate.

Such, however, is the fact; these cattle are the aphides and the gall-insects. Any one who will take the trouble to observe, (and who would not?) may see the ants ascending plants and trees to milk the aphides, which subsist solely upon the juices of vegetables, and yield through two little tubes a saccharine liquid; when no ant is by to be benefited, the aphides eject it to a considerable distance. When they do not do this voluntarily, the ant employs its antennæ* in place of fingers, and a good purpose they answer, indeed; passing them rapidly, first on one side of these tubes, then on the other, a drop of the coveted liquid repays the milker for its trouble; so it passes from one aphis to another, until its hunger is appeased.

The ants are jealous of their curious. stock, pasture them upon particular plants, and an ant from a neighboring hill that attempts a robbery, receives condign punishment at the hands of these watchful herdsmen. The possession of intelligence by the ant, seems placed beyond a doubt, when we are informed that the yellow ants collecting a drove of these kine, actually domesticate them in their own habitations, protect and caress them after the most approved manner of pastoral times, and even confine them in an inclosure. Sometimes they build a chamber around a thistle stalk, upon which the insect-cattle feed, so that they have only to climb the stalk to enter the fold; in fact, the expedients for preserving their cattle are as varied as those practiced by man, and the proceedings we have related, are by no means the prompting of an unvarying instinct, but of an ever accommodating intelli

Frequently called feelers.