The Homes and Habits of Ants.
SOME warm day, when you do not know what to do, find an ant-hill under a shady tree and watch the little fellows at their work. This is what I have been doing. The ring of earth around the hole, like the wall of a fort, is familiar, but the most interesting part of their home is under ground. See them drag the pebbles out of the hole in the center. If you could follow it down you would find the way irregular, and at the end a number of galleries, each supported by little pillars of earth. The young ants are kept on these shelves, and, in fact, it is their city. Here the chief men meet to talk over the matters of the colony. But how can they talk? Put an ant under a microscope and you will see two little projections on the head, called mandibles. The ant touches its mandibles to those of its neighbor and thus they speak. Ants are very strong, persevering, and industrious, some working all night; and I have seen an ant carry a stone three or four times its size. They are fond of sweet things. Once I laid a piece of sugar near a hole. An ant soon found it, and though the piece was many times as large as itself, it lifted the sugar above its head and started for the hill; all went well until the hill was reached. It would get hold of the sugar and attempt to drag it up, but when the first pebble was struck it would roll over and over. At last, by leveling a place so as to get a start, by the occasional help of a passing ant, the sugar was pulled over the hill. I noticed a spider, one day, stop to rest near an ant-hill. The ants soon saw him and four or five came out. They took hold of his legs and swarmed on his back. He was dragged to the hole and the rest flocked out to help eat him up. The ants carry their young out every pleasant day to lie in the sun, and at the first sight of rain they hurry them into their house. These little creatures have good memories, and never forget their friends. If an ant be taken out of an ant-hill, kept for two months and then put back into the same hill, it will be received; but if it be placed in another, it will be killed. In Texas there is found the "agricultural" ant. These clear a place from weeds and grass for about two feet around their house. They then drop the seed of a kind of grass, whose grain they like very much. The ants take care of the young blades, protecting them from insects, and when the grain is ripe carry it into their homes. But what is more peculiar, if the store of food should become damp during a rain it will all be carried out on the first sunny day and dried, and then brought back.—Congregationalist.