Ants are no more civilized than human beings. I made this disappointing discovery the other afternoóH while having tea on the verandah. Noticing a peculiar dark patch near the coping, I proceeded to investigate. The dark patch turned out to be a writhing, squirming, struggling swarm of tiny ants, Examining them under a magnifying glass, I could see the little creatüres massed in a death struggle that would make the recent battle for Hsuchow on the Lung-Hai Railway look like à Sunday School picnic There they were piled up to a depth of at least half an inch, each of the many tens of thousands of combatants busily chewing up the abdomen or thorax of another or sawing off a leg or an antenna, the while its own. body was being dismembered—no, quarter sought or given. no prisoners, just slaughter, The thickest part of the fight covered about eight square inches of the brick coping, but the battlefield spread much further in every direction, where could be seen groups of two, three or four ants with their jaws locked on some helpless victim from the opposite side. It was impossible, however, for me to.distinguish between the two opposing armies, for all the ants were of the same species, but it was perfectly clear that they represented two different colonies, because in either direction from the scene of conflict there was a steady stream of ants passing to and from a nest in a crack in the coping. Those moving away from the battlefield all carried the remains of dead warriors in their jaws, those moving toward it seemingly eager for the fray. Evidently tension between the two Yolonies of ants had reached breaking point, probably as a result of border incidents, kidnappings, or even territorial aggression, and so they had taken a leaf out of humanity's book and decided to settle the dispute in the time-honoured method customary amongst men, But, as already suggested, it is very disappointing, after all that we. have been led to expect of the ant with its marvellously developed social system.—,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.