Instincts comparable with habits, but different in their origin -- Instincts graduated -- Aphides and
ants -- Instincts variable -- Domestic instincts, their origin -- Natural instincts of the cuckoo, ostrich, and parasitic bees -- Slave-making
ants -- Hive-bee, its cell-making instinct - - Difficulties on the theory of the Natural Selection of instincts -- Neuter or sterile insects -- Summary.
Who knows, perhaps he only loves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in love with it at close quarters; perhaps he only loves building it and does not want to live in it, but will leave it, when completed, for the use of les animaux domestiques--such as the
ants, the sheep, and so on.
But we might give the
ants a commission to look out for us; they run to and fro as if they had something to do, and they certainly know of a wife for our little snail!"
The ant-king had come in the night with thousands and thousands of
ants, and the grateful creatures had by great industry picked up all the millet-seed and gathered them into the sacks.
The
ants were pouring down a glacier of loose earth heaped between the stones of the ruin--large brown
ants with polished bodies.
One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large
ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another.
It would be difficult to explain why and whither
ants whose heap has been destroyed are hurrying: some from the heap dragging bits of rubbish, larvae, and corpses, others back to the heap, or why they jostle, overtake one another, and fight, and it would be equally difficult to explain what caused the Russians after the departure of the French to throng to the place that had formerly been Moscow.
Now and then, while we rested, we watched the laborious
ant at his work.
AN
ANT went to the bank of a river to quench its thirst, and being carried away by the rush of the stream, was on the point of drowning.
(
Ant. 1) Hovering around our city walls he waits, His spearmen raven at our seven gates.
(
Ant.) Not to be born at all Is best, far best that can befall, Next best, when born, with least delay To trace the backward way.
These words so alarmed Mombi that she quickly transformed herself from a shadow to a Black
Ant, in which shape she crawled along the ground, seeking a crack or crevice in which to hide her tiny body.