Savages turn birds and beasts to account as food, clothing, and materials for weapons and tools; they also observe with profit the instincts of these creatures. Le Vaillant, the famous explorer, tells us that in Africa the negroes eat any strange food they see the monkeys devour, well assured that it will prove wholesome. When the surveyors of the first transcontinental railroad of America began their labors, they gave diligent heed to the trails of buffaloes in the Rocky Mountains, believing that these sagacious brutes in centuries of quest had discovered the easiest passes. In constructive powers bees, ants and wasps far outrank quadrupeds. Indeed one of the supreme feats of human architecture, the dome, forms part of the nest of the warrior white ant, _Termes bellicosus_. [Illustration: Lower part of warrior ants’ nest, showing dome.] It is deemed a mark of unusual intelligence when an ape, of kin to man himself, uses a stone as a hammer wherewith to break open a nut, and yet the like intelligence is displayed by _Ammophila urnaria_, as described by Dr. and Mrs. George W. Peckham in their charming book, “Wasps Solitary and Social”:[32] [32] Published by Houghton Mifflin & Co., Boston. [Illustration: Wasp using a pebble as a hammer. From “Wasps Solitary and Social,” Copyright, 1905, by George W. Peckham and Elizabeth G. Peckham. Reproduced by their permission.] “Just here must be told the story of one little wasp whose individuality stands out in our minds more distinctly than that of any of the others. We remember her as the most fastidious and perfect little worker of the whole season, so nice was she in her adaptation of means to ends, so busy and contented in her labor of love, and so pretty in her pride over the completed work. In filling up her nest she put her head down into it and bit away the loose earth from the sides, letting it fall to the bottom of her burrow, and then, after a quantity had accumulated, jammed it down with her head. Earth was then brought from the outside and pressed in, and then more was bitten from the sides. When at last the filling was level with the ground, she brought a quantity of fine grains of dirt to the spot, and picking up a small pebble in her mandibles, used it as a hammer in pounding them down with rapid strokes, thus making this spot as hard and firm as the surrounding surface.”