in proportion to their own small size; you will read also strange stories of how they collect the eggs of those little green insects which you may see in such numbers upon a rosebud, and tend them with great care--because these tiny aphides are their "cows," and they "milk" them by gently stroking them with their antennæ, and so obtain a kind of honey--also how the red and black ants occupy the positions of masters and slaves, the blacks doing all the hardest work, and being kept strictly indoors; and how it is not _all_ work, even with the workers, for they have been caught at play, having high games of leap-frog and hide-and-seek! Interesting as is the mode of life among our ants at home, not less so is that of those found in Southern Europe and in Syria, as well as in India. They are called "Harvesters," because they "prepare their meat in the summer" by gathering the seeds of grasses, and storing them in granaries against the winter. I have watched long trains of these ants going and returning with their loads, keeping their "own side" as carefully as if passengers in London streets. A naturalist who was watching such a train, once strewed a number of grey and white beads about, and waited to see what would happen. One unsuspicious ant seized a bead and trotted off with it to the nest; but not so a second time; the mistake was soon found out, and the (to them) worthless beads were left untouched by the wary workers, who before they stored the seeds in their granary, took off the chaff and left it in heaps outside, to be blown away by the wind. It has been thought strange that the seeds thus collected do not sprout and grow, but for this moisture would be necessary, and the ants keep their grain as free from it as possible, spreading it out in the sun to dry, and storing it in granaries, underground like the nurseries, but quite distinct from them. If you have ever disturbed one of their nests, you do not need to be told that ants, as well as bees and wasps, have stings, with a "poison apparatus" like that of a serpent. How wonderful are these tiny creatures made by God, who has set them in their places in His creation, and given them their work to do, and the instinct which enables them so faithfully to play their part in the great world, that they are set as a pattern for us to imitate! How true it is that "Each shell, each crawling insect holds a rank Important in the scale of Him who framed This scale of beings; holds a rank which, lost, Would break the chain, and leave a gap behind Which Nature's self would rue." And what may we learn from the Harvester-ant, who "provideth her meat in the summer"? I think I can hear you answer, "A lesson of prudence and foresight."