In very hot lands the ants stir about all winter. Such ants lay up stores of food. You shall hear of them by and by. In cooler lands, during winter, the ants are asleep, or, as we say, are torpid. The young swarms usually go out in autumn. I have seen very large swarms in the spring. Ants like sugar and honey best of all food. They get honey from flowers, and in other ways of which I will soon tell you. Some like seeds which have a sweet taste. For this reason they eat some kinds of grass-seeds, oats, apple-seeds, and such things. Ants take their food by licking it. Their little rough tongues wear away bits of the seed; they also suck up the oil and juice. They seem to press the food with their jaws. It has been found out that they know how to moisten their food and make it soft. If you give them dry sugar or cake, they turn it into a kind of paste or honey. Then it is easier to suck or drink it up. If you put a nest of ants with plenty of earth into a large glass jar, and put some food near by for the ants to eat, they may settle down in the jar, to make a home. If you cover the outside of the jar with thick, dark paper, the ants may build close to the glass. Then, when you take off the paper, you will be able to see the halls and storerooms. You might put such a jar in a safe place out of doors. Then you would be able to study the ants, as they roam around near by, or do their work inside the jar. LESSON V. THE ANTS ON A TRIP. The round hole in the ant-hill is called the gate. The ants can close it with a bit of stone. Often there are two, three, or even more, gates for one ant-hill. Once I saw a hill with six large gates. Now I will tell you of a very queer ant-hill. It was made by big black ants, in a little valley between two hills of sand. Into this valley had blown a very large sheet of thick paper. It had been around a ham and was very greasy. It had lain on the ground, crumpled up, in sun, and snow, and rain, for a year. By that time it was hard and stiff, and weeds had grown up about it. One day, as I was going by, I saw ants running in and out of the folds of the paper. I took a stick and turned the top fold open like a lid. It was full of ants and of white pupa-cases. The ants, I think, liked the folds of the paper for halls, and the larger wrinkles for rooms. They had found out how to have a house without much work in making it. When I opened this paper-hill, they ran in swarms to pick up the white bundles. Poor things! They did not know where to go for safety. So I laid the lid of their house back in its place, and soon they were quiet again. Now I will tell you how ants move from one house to another. One day I saw by my garden path a line of ants moving all one way. They were black ants. They went two by two, or one and two, close to each other. Every one had in its jaws a white bundle. I found that they all came from an ant-hill. They came up out of the gate very fast, one by one, each with its bundle.