THERE are other armies in South Africa besides the Boers and the British; armies of very little folk, which go out on foraging expeditions when their colonies stand in need of supplies—forays planned and executed with military precision, and, as a general thing, uniformly successful.

I speak of an army of ants.

A close observer, residing in South Africa, describes one of these forays in the following way:

"The army, which I estimated to number about fifteen thousand ants, started from their home in the mud walls of a hut and marched in the direction of a small mound of fresh earth, but a few yards distant. The head of the column halted on reaching the foot of the mound and waited for the rest of the force to arrive at the place of operations, which evidently was to be the mound of fresh earth. When the remainder had arrived and halted so that the entire army was assembled, a number of ants detached themselves from the main body and began to ascend to the top of the mound, while the others began moving so as to encircle the base of the mound.

"Very soon a number from the detachment which had ascended the mound, or lilliputian kopje, evidently the attacking party, entered the loose earth and speedily returned, each bearing a cricket or a young grasshopper, dead, which he deposited upon the ground and then returned for a fresh load. Those who had remained on the outside of the mound, took up the crickets and grasshoppers as they were brought out and bore them down to the base of the hill, returning at once for fresh victims. Soon the contents of the mound seemed to be exhausted, and then the whole force returned home, each ant carrying his burden of food for the community."

My very young readers will be surprised, no doubt, to hear me speak of wasps as cement-makers, or paper-makers, but such, in truth, they are. You can form no idea of the industry and toil these little folk expend upon the structure they call home. Nothing pleases them better than to find an old fence rail covered with a light gray fuzz of woody fiber loosened from decaying wood by excessive soakings of rain. Dozens of these little pulp-gatherers will descend upon the rail, and as fast as each of them obtains a load away he flies to the place where the home building is already going on.

This may be in a clump of bushes near a stream, and as fast as they deposit their load of fiber down they fly to the stream, and having secured a mouthful of water back they go to the nest to beat the fiber into a thin sheet, which they deftly join to the main body, the jointure being imperceptible. Such a throng of workers coming and going, some to the fence, some to the nest, some to the brook, each addition to the structure being the tiniest mite, yet growing perceptibly under the united efforts of the little builders.

TAR.—One of the commonest substances met with in city or town is tar. A paper roof covered with tar makes a very good protection against sun and rain provided a suitable amount of gravel covers the tar. The kind of tar most used is called coal-tar or gas-tar. This is made at the gas factory from the distilling of soft coal. Tar that comes from different varieties of pine and spruce is used to cover ropes and hulls of ships. It is from his having some of it usually clinging to his hands and clothes that the sailor boy came to be called "Jack Tar," and from his fondness for the sea one of the royal family of England got the pet name of "Royal Tarry Breeks." It is strange that there has been no change in the work of getting this kind of tar from the wood for over twenty-three hundred years. The wood is placed in holes dug in the ground and covered carefully with turf so as to keep out the air and prevent too much burning. Some of the wood is left free so the air may get at it and burn it enough to make heat enough to distil the pitch from the rest of it. This is gathered into barrels and is black because of the smoke that gets into it. It was this sort of tar that Benjamin Franklin had his experience with one time in Philadelphia. He was running along on the tops of tar barrels on the wharf one fine day with his Sunday clothes on. The head of one barrel was not in good condition, and so Benjamin went down into it. The next issue of his paper had a very amusing account of the accident in which Franklin used his powers to make puns to great advantage in making fun at his own expense.

ANTS.—Would you like to get a clean skeleton of any small animal? Place the body near or upon an ant hill and the little workers will clean it off for you perfectly, picking every bone as clean as if they were under contract with a forfeit for every scrap of flesh, skin, or sinew left upon any bone. They like meat so well that they will attack animals that are many times larger than themselves and carry the work to a successful end. There are three kinds of ants in an ant hill—males, females, and neuters. The males and females have wings and do no work to speak of. They are always waited upon very carefully by the neuters who have no wings, but are noted for their industry, skill, and strength. It has been said that the ant stores up large quantities of grain in the summer for winter use. Whoever said that was not well acquainted with his subject. In winter the ants neither eat nor work. Some of the neuters have their jaws, or mandibles, made much larger than the rest. These are the soldiers, and they fight with greater fierceness than any other creatures. Huber, the blind naturalist who told the world so many astonishing things about bees, describes a great fight he once saw between two colonies of these little warriors. "I shall not say what lighted up discord between these two republics, the one as populous as the other. The two armies met midway between their respective residences. Their serried columns reached from the field of battle to the nest, and were two feet in width. The field of battle, which extended over a space of two or three square feet, was strewn with dead bodies and wounded; it was also covered with venom, and exhaled a penetrating odor. The struggle began between two ants, which locked themselves together with their mandibles, while they raised themselves upon their legs. They quickly grasped each other so tightly that they rolled one over the other in the dust. When night came they stopped fighting, but the next morning they went at it again and piled the ground with slain and wounded." Their stings hurt because they carry a liquid that is like that found in nettles and in the hairs and other parts of certain caterpillars. This is called formic acid, and is made by chemists for certain purposes. The red ant dislikes to work if he can get slaves to do it for him. Perhaps we should say if she can get it done for her, because these neuters are rather more like females than like male ants. They make war purposely to get into the homes of other colonies to carry away their eggs and baby ants. They bring these up to wait upon them. When they go on a journey the slaves have to carry their owners, and sometimes they even feed them until they refuse to feed themselves. They have been known to die of hunger with plenty of food within easy reach, but with no slave at hand to place it before them. In going out to fight for the offspring of other ants they go in regular columns, and those that are left after the slaughter return home in the same order, their solid trains sometimes extending more than a hundred feet. Some ants keep cows. Plant lice have honeydew in their bodies, and when well fed they give out a great deal of it. Ants are fond of it. They sometimes confine the plant lice, feed them, and milk the honeydew from the bodies of their captors. A German scientist named Simon, has recently returned from Australia with some great stories about ants. He says he suffered much from their attacks. In trying to get rid of them in many ways he at last hit upon the idea of spreading a poison where they would have to pass across it. He used prussiate of potash which is sometimes used in photography. Another name for it is cyanide of potassium. He says, "How astonished was I when I saw the whole surface of the heap strewn with dead ants like a battle-field. The piece of cyanide, however, had totally disappeared. More than one-half of the community had met death in this desperate struggle, but still the death-defying courage of the heroic little creatures had succeeded in removing the fatal poison, the touch of which must have been just as disagreeable to them as it was dangerous. Recklessly neglecting their own safety, they had carried it off little by little, covering every step with a corpse. Once removed from the heap, the poison had been well covered with leaves and pieces of wood, and thus prevented from doing further damage. The heroism of these insects, which far surpasses what any other creature, including even man, has ever shown in the way of self-sacrifice and loyalty, had made such an impression on me that I gave up my campaign, and henceforth I bore with many an outrage from my neighbors rather than destroy the valiant beings whose courage I had not been able to crush." In the extreme southwest of the United States are colonies of ants that have a peculiar custom of setting apart some of their number to give up their lives for their fellows in a strange way. They feed upon honey until they are unable to walk. Then their fellows take the greatest care of them and feed them so their bodies are distended enormously. A number of these ants when fed so highly look very much like a bunch of little grapes, they are so round and translucent. When food is scarce later the other ants come to their heavy mates and eat them with great relish.

AIR.—The wear and tear in our bodies is replaced by new material carried to the spot by the blood. The heart forces the blood out along the arteries in a bright red current. It comes back blackened with the refuse material. It passes to the lungs, where it comes into contact with the air we breathe. It does not quite touch the air, but is acted upon by the air through very thin partitions much as the cash business is carried on in some houses and banks with the cashiers all placed behind screens, where they may be seen and talked to but not reached. Purified in the lungs by contact with fresh air, the blood goes back to continue the good work of making the body sound. But if the air has been used before by someone in breathing it has become bad and the blood does not get the benefit from contact with it in the lungs that nature intended. Ordinarily a man breathes in about four thousand gallons of air in a day if he is taking things easily, but when he is hard at mental or physical work he needs much more than this. Air that has been hurt by being breathed is restored to the right condition by the leaves of trees and plants. In large cities where people are crowded together there is a lack of good air. But nature is continually rushing the air about so that new may take the place of what has been used, rain washes it out, and the storm brings in from the country just the kind of air the city man needs in his lungs.