Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ANTS. I MET to-day two straggling streams of workers moving along a hillside path, one to, the other fro—black-bodied, six-legged, with a most determined aspect, and an almost forbidding look (I forgot to mention that there was a magnifying glass in my hand). Apparently each and all were much pressed for time ; they hurried along singly, none speaking to his neighbour, each seemed intent on his own object, though the result was to be common; each bearing his own burden, not often helpful to others, except in the general cause, self-concentrated, eager, bitter, obstinate, self-willed, narrow, conscientious, ambitious. I followed them till I reached a disturbed ant-hillock which had been lately overthrown, and where the possessors were repairing their home with the most vehement industry. 'Who directs them ? Each seemed to be going onhis own hook, minding his own business, hardly conscious of the existence of anything but himself; " frightfully in earnest," as Disraeli once said of Gladstone. Yet the work was all in common; the community of goods, indeed, seemed absolute ; no one had any personal property whatever; house, stores, eggs, everything belonged to all—a most republican form of society! No one interfered with the rest; there was apparently no chief, overlooker, or director; yet the work went on apace, the repairing and building up of the ruined city " with neatness and dispatch." Some seized a pellet of earth or a stone, and dragged it backwards up the steep incline, using their hind legs to cling on. to rough places, while they hauled away at a weight greater far than that of their own bodies. Some hoisted aloft in their front arms, as it were, a stick or piece of grass twice or even thrice their own length, and moved forward bearing it in the air. Each addit...