Birds and All Nature, Vol. 5, No. 3, March 1899: Illustrated by Color PhotographyVarious
History
Birds and All Nature, Vol. 5, No. 3, March 1899: Illustrated by Color Photography
Various
Birds -- Periodicals; Natural history -- Periodicals
It is stated that a thousand species of ants are known. No doubt there
is much of interest about each kind. The "Driver Ant" is so choice of
time and labor that, when building its covered roads, if a crevice in
a rock or a shady walk is reached, it utilizes these, then continues
arching its path as before. If a flood comes these ants form into large
balls with the weak ones in the middle, the stronger on the outside,
and so swim on the water.
The ant benefits man by acting as a scavenger, by turning up the
subsoil, and in various other ways. But flowers prefer the visits of
moths and butterflies; as ants are of no service to them in scattering
pollen, they do not wish them to get their honey. Some of the flowers
have found out that ants, though so industrious by reputation, are
lazy about getting out early in the morning for they dislike the dew
very much. Hence by 9 o'clock these wary flowers have closed their
doors. Others take the precaution to baffle ant visitors by holding an
extra quantity of dew on the basins of their leaves, while still others
exude a sticky fluid from their stems which glues the poor ants to the
spot.
Campanula secretes her honey in a box with a lid. Cyclamen presents
curved surfaces, while narcissus makes her tube top narrow. Other
flowers have hooks and hairs by which the ants are warned to seek their
honey elsewhere.
THE CHARITY OF BREAD CRUMBS.
The recent "cold wave," which with its severity and length has sorely
tried the patience of Denver's citizens, has had its pleasant features.
Perhaps chief of these has been the presence in our midst of scores of
feathered visitors driven in, doubtless, by pangs of hunger, from the
surrounding country.
Flocks of chickadees have flown cheerily about our streets, chirping
and pecking industriously, as if to shame those of us who lagged at
home because of zero temperature. They were calling to one another as
we stood at the window watching them last Saturday morning.
Suddenly, down the street with the swiftness and fury of an Apache
band, tore a group of small savages, each armed with a weapon in the
shape of a stick about two feet long.
"What can those boys be playing?" inquired someone, and the answer to
the question was found immediately as in horror she saw the sticks fly
with deadly exactness into a group of the brave little snowbirds, and
several of them drop lifeless or flutter piteously in the frozen street.
"How can boys be so heartless!" said the lady, rising in righteous
wrath to reason with them.
"Thoughtless is nearer the truth," remarked a friend who had witnessed
the scene. "Their hearts haven't been awakened on the bird question and
it would be better to try and stir up their mothers and teachers than
to fuss at the boys themselves."
But the Denver birds have plenty of friends and this has been proved
many times during the past week.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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