Highest of all are the ant egricultürisis who farm fungi.
They plant the spore in minute "fields" on the ground or in caverns hollowed out beneath earth. They weed their fields, removing all plants except the fungi.
Among other places, the civilization of the fungus-growing ants exists in desert parts of South Africa.
It was for long a puzzle to know whence came the water with which they industriously irrigated their fungus fields.
Then digging revealed that ants dig wells as far as sixty-five feet down to subterranean watercourses. Thousands of them climb up and down these wells in a ceaseless chain day and night. And each bears in his mouth a drop of water that would hardly be visible to the eye.
Thus does the ant irrigate his fields in deserts that even man has failed to irrigate.
The race of men and the rival race of ants differ in one important respect. Every man is complete and independent in himself. But the worker ant, the stomach ant and the breeding ent are biologically different and could not live without each other.
Some scientists have a startling theory. They believe these different ants represent the different parts of some strange creature who once existed in a single body.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.