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Updated: June 16, 2025
The history of a formicarium, or ant's nest, is as follows: The workers, only, hibernate, and are found early in the spring, taking care of the eggs and larvæ produced by the autumnal brood of females. In the course of the summer these eggs and larvaæ arrive at maturity, and swarm on a hot sultry day, usually early in September.
Here in this stable I leave the ant's wings that lifted me up into the air for the swifts and other birds to eat me, and let's take to level ground and our feet once more; and if they're not shod in pinked shoes of cordovan, they won't want for rough sandals of hemp; 'every ewe to her like, 'and let no one stretch his leg beyond the length of the sheet; and now let me pass, for it's growing late with me."
If it go on to such heights as we hear proposed and lauded, if it come actually to its ideal of the ant-heap, ruled with iron justice, the number of new contraventions will be out of all proportion multiplied. Take the case of work alone. Man is an idle animal. He is at least as intelligent as the ant; but generations of advisers have in vain recommended him the ant's example.
The birds we observed were common to other parts of the continent, being a few screaming cockatoos, parrots, and quails, and near the water a small white egret. There was nothing of interest to recall our memories to this first visit to a new part of Australia, save a very large ant's nest, measuring twenty feet in height.
"Or, the next time you wish to harrow up your feelings, just walk over an ant's nest, and apply a large magnifying-glass to the spots where your feet have been placed. You will see worse sights even than this, I suspect." From what I saw I should say that elephants have as great a variety of character as human beings. In one point only all acted much alike.
'I never thought little matters seemed worth treating in this way. 'Everything that is a duty or a grief must be worth it, said John. 'Consider the worthlessness of what we think most important in That Presence. A kingdom less than an ant's nest in comparison. But, here, I must show you a more everyday bit.
The mode of nidification is unknown; but the natives told me that the nest was formed of leaves placed on an ant's nest, or on some projecting limb of a very lofty tree, and they believe that it contains only one young bird. The egg is quite unknown, and the natives declared they had never seen it; and a very high reward offered for one by a Dutch official did not meet with success.
But the center of them all was Olympia Johns herself spinster, thirty-four, as small and active and excitedly energetic as an ant trying to get around a match. She had much of the ant's brownness and slimness, too. A lock would tangle in front of her eyes, and she would impatiently shove it back with a jab of her thin rough hands, never stopping in her machine-gun volley of words.
Yet none seemed worthy of comparison with even what little I knew of the significance of this ant's labor, for this was earnest of what would make trivial the engineering skill of Egyptians, of Chinese patience, of municipal pride and continental schism.
Well, that ant got Uncle Wiggily a glass of water, but you know how it is an ant's glass is so very small that it only holds as much water as you could put on the point of a pin, and really, I'm not exaggerating a bit, when I say that Uncle Wiggily drank seventeen thousand four hundred and twenty-six and a half ant-glasses of water before he had enough.
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