As for La Rochelle, read the interesting chapter in M. de Quatrefages' _Souvenirs d'un Naturaliste_. NOTE 13.--Book iii., Chap. ii. _The Ants._--The migrations of the tropical ants, say Azara and Lacordaire, sometimes last over two or three days. They are to be compared in continuousness and frightful numbers only to the clouds of pigeons which, in North America, obscure the sky for several days in succession (see Audubon). Lund (_Annales des Sciences Naturelles_, 1831, vol. xxiii., p. 113) gives a curious picture of these ant-migrations. They are terribly warlike, and the Americans amuse themselves by opposing in a duel the _visiting ant_ (Atta) to the _Araraa_ ant. The latter, though the weaker, prevails through the potency of its poison. As for our European ants, my brother-in-law, M. Hippolyte Mialaret, transmits to me a curious fact, which, I believe, has not before been observed. He gave them a medley of various kinds of grain,--wheat, barley, rye,--which they employed in their buildings. Having opened the ant-hill, he found the grains carefully classified, and distributed on different stories,--wheat, for example, on the second, barley on the third,--the different kinds being nowhere mixed. An excellent Italian dissertation by M. Giuseppe Gené would induce one to believe Huber mistaken in his assertion that the mother ant can by her unaided self found a community. After her fecundation she retires into a corner, where she plucks off her wings, and waits. There some prowling ants discover, feel, and recognize her, her and her eggs sown on the ground, with much prudence and even visible mistrust. Afterwards they explore the country round about with an infinite circumspection, always coming back to the mother, and hesitating long before they decide. At length, their numbers increasing, they definitively adopt her, and set to work. The indomitable perseverance of the ants is celebrated in a beautiful Oriental legend of I know not what Asiatic prince,--Tamerlane, I believe. Beaten and defeated several times in one campaign, he was seated, almost despairing, in the depth of his tent. An ant mounted the side. Several times he made it drop, but it invariably reascended. He was curious to see how long it would persevere, and twenty-four times threw it to the ground without discouraging it. Then he grew tired, and moreover he was full of admiration. The ant conquered. So he said: "Let us imitate it. We too will conquer as the ant has done." But for the ant, the hero had missed the Empire of Asia. [Illustration] NOTE 14.--Book iii., Chap. iii.