The final chapter in the ant war that has been raging on my verandah for the past several days has been written, Forces far beyond their control have intervened and have obliterated all the combatants on both sides. These are an over-zealous coolie and torrential rain, The coolie with his broom made a clean sweep of the ants on the floor of the screened-in portion of the verandah where we take our meals during the warmer months and where the main fighting was taking place, while a sudden overflow from_a water-spout, flooding the exposed part of the verandah, swept away the lines of communication of the aggressor ant army and the reinforcements hurrying to the scene of hostilities from their base, Thus an end has been put to a phenomenon of Nature which has afforded me a great deal of interest. But before leaving the subject I would like to record the fact that some days ago, before the aggressor ant colony launched its second foray, it changed quarters, moving from its old nest in a crack at the edge of the verandah coping into a big flower-pot standing near by. A stream of ants was observed pouring out of the crack, up the side of the flowerpot and into a round hole in the earth in the latter. Most of these ants were workers and they carried in their jaws little white objects of varying sizes, which, on closer inspection, proved to be eggs, larvae and pupa. Amongst the workers were a few soldiers and here and there a more or less distended Queen, The last was attended by workers, which seemed to be helping them along, pulling in front and shoving behind, just as one helps a fat lady up a hillside. The scene called to mind other such ant migrations seen when I was a boy in the interior of China. These, the farmers told me, Were a sure sign that it was going to rain. Later in life, when engaged in zoological collecting work in other parts of the country, I was able to verify the fact that such ant migrations actually did presage heavy rains, a fact which has certainly been, confirmed in the present instance, for the change of quarters described above took place just before the almost unprecedented spell of wet weather we have recently experienced here, in Shanghai, Had
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.