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And just as the cattle in the distant farm throve on grain and oil-cake, and the pheasant in the copse near by on wood-ants' "eggs," and the trout in the Cerdyn brook on ephemerals hatched at the margin of the pool, so Kweek, the field-vole, abroad in the nights of summer, grew sleek and well conditioned on good supplies of seeds and grubs.
The stars were clustered chiefly near the fire, and were less like stars than spots of the phosphorescent wood that are scattered on the ground when one knocks a rotten stump about to lick up its swarms of wood-ants. So Jack came closer, and at last so close that even his dull eyes could see. The great gray lake was a flock of sheep and the phosphorescent specks were their eyes.
The males of all the different species which I have examined have white feathers on the throat. I suspect that all the male jacamars hitherto discovered have this distinctive mark. I could learn nothing of its incubation. The Indians informed me that one species of jacamar lays its eggs in the wood-ants' nests, which are so frequent in the trees of Guiana, and appear like huge black balls.
This extremely beautiful and in its effect beneficial feeling and belief, or instinct, or superstition if the superior inhabitants of the wood-ants' nest, who throw their dead away and think no more about them, will have it so is a sweet and pleasant thing in the village life and a consolation to those who are lonely. Let me in conclusion give an instance.
The small ant-bear, and the large one, remarkable for its long, broad bushy tail, are sometimes seen on the tops of the wood-ants’ nests; the armadillos bore in the sand-hills, like rabbits in a warren; and the porcupine is now and then discovered in the trees over your head. This, too, is the native country of the sloth.
At rare intervals he succeeded in capturing a rabbit. Once or twice, after a fierce frost had followed a wet sleet storm, he had climbed trees and found dead birds frozen to their perches. But most of the time he had nothing but starvation rations of wood-ants and buds. In the course of a few weeks he was lean as a heron, and his collar hung loose in his fur.
Here we have a contrary effect it is the insects which have been transformed; the millions of wood-ants, let us say, inhabiting an old and exceedingly populous nest have been transformed into men, but in form only; mentally they are still ants, all silently, everlastingly hurrying by, absorbed in their ant-business. You can almost smell the formic acid.
No sooner had one passed over than another came up. My home-made tent, a large sheet of green oilsilk, smuggled from home, kept off a good deal of the rain, but, nevertheless, I had a good opportunity of studying the condition of a half-drowned rat. In spite of the wet and the presence of some large wood-ants, I rather enjoyed the sour apples, the first I had tasted that summer.
The small ant-bear, and the large one, remarkable for his long, broad, bushy tail, are sometimes seen on the tops of the wood-ants' nests; the armadillos bore in the sand-hills, like rabbits in a warren; and the porcupine is now and then discovered in the trees over your head. This, too, is the native country of the sloth.
Walking in the street, one of the swarming multitude, you are in but not of it. You are only one with the others in appearance; in mind you are as unlike them as a man is unlike an ant, and the love and sympathy you feel towards them is about equal to that which you experience when looking down on the swarm in a wood-ants' nest.
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