Now, perchance, some of my sharp little friends will think Jack a silly boy; but wait, lads and lasses, and hear his story, before you decide. I have said that he had a way peculiar to himself, to gratify his curiosity. Instead of asking a bushel of questions, one after another, without waiting for a single answer, he was in the habit of _observing_ things, and _investigating_ things. In this way he gained a vast deal of knowledge. Perhaps, you may wish to know what I mean by _observing_ and _investigating_. I will try to make you understand it. One day in spring, Jack was in the garden, digging up a place to sow some pepper-grass seed. By-and-by he happened to see an ant running along with a piece of a leaf in his mouth. So he stopped his work, and looked at the ant. The little insect paddled along with his six legs very fast, and pretty soon came to a little hillock of earth, about as large round as a small flap-jack, and twice as high. It seemed to consist of a heap of particles of sand. Now Jack, instead of running away to tell his mother about what he had found, remained to _observe_ and look into the matter, or _investigate_ it. On looking at the little mound, he saw there were a number of holes in it; and into one of them, the little ant with the leaf, plunged head first. “I wonder where he’s gone to?” said Jack. In a minute or two, several ants came out of these holes, and some of them had small white things that looked like eggs. These they laid down in the sun, and went into their holes to fetch more. Every ant seemed to be busy about something. Jack saw several ants go away from the hill. He determined to observe them, and find out what was going on. He watched one fellow particularly, and he went to the distance of as much as three yards. There was a large dead fly. The ant went to work, gnawed off his head, took it in his teeth, and scrabbled back to the hill. Down he went into one of the holes. In a few seconds he came back, made another journey to the dead fly, sawed off a thigh, and transported it to the hill. In this way he kept going out and in, and in the course of an hour, the ant had carried the whole carcass of the fly into the hill! “Well,” said Jack to himself, “I guess that fellow’s the butcher, and supplies the ant-folks with meat.” And no doubt Jack was right. While all this was going on, Jack had time to observe and investigate other things. He saw one ant go as much as a dozen times to a dandelion, and load himself with the yellow powder which he gathered from the blossoms. “I guess that is the baker,” said Jack. He saw several climb up the stalks of tall plants, to get the juice or honey from the blossoms. “I guess these fellows are the grocers!” said the boy.