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question the propriety of nature in having created them; but when we give the subject a little attention, we find that they were not created in vain. Were it not for these busy creatures, what would become of the vast quantities of decomposing substances found in some countries? What would be done with the decaying vegetation and the dead animal matter? Why, in many places, were it not consumed by these insects, and reorganised into new forms of life, it would produce pestilence and death; and surely these are far more disagreeable things than ants.

Of ants there are many different kinds; but the greatest number of species belong to warm countries, where, indeed, they are most useful. Some of these species are so curious in their habits, that whole volumes have been written about them, and naturalists have spent a lifetime in their study and observation. Their

social and domestic economy is of the most singular character-more so than that of the bees; and I am afraid here to give a single trait of their lives, lest I should be led on to talk too much about them. I need only mention the wonderful nests or hills which some species build— those great cones of twenty feet in height, and so strong that wild bulls run up their sides, and stand upon their tops, without doing them the least injury! Others make their houses of cylindrical form, rising several feet from the surface. Others, again, prefer nesting in the trees, where they construct large cellular masses of many shapes, suspending them from the highest branches; while many species make their waxen dwellings in hollow trunks of trees, or beneath the surface of the earth. There is not a species, however, whose habits, fully observed and described, would not strike you with astonishment. Indeed, it is difficult to believe all that

is related about these insects by naturalists who have made them their study. One can hardly understand how such little creatures can be gifted with so much intelligence or instinct, as some choose to call it.

Man is not the only enemy of the ants. If he were, it is to be feared that these small, insignificant creatures would soon make the earth too hot for him. So prolific are they, that if left to themselves our whole planet would, in a short period, become a gigantic ants' nest.

Nature has wisely provided against the over-increase of the ant family. No living thing has a greater variety of enemies than they. In all the divisions of animated nature there are ant-destroyers-ant-eaters! To begin with the mammalia: man himself feeds upon them—for there are tribes of Indians in South America, the principal part of whose food consists of dried termites, which they bake into a kind of " paste !" There are quadrupeds that live exclusively on them, as the ant-bear and the pangolins, or scaly ant-eaters of the eastern continent. There are birds, too, of many sorts that devour the ants, and there are even some who make them exclusively their food, as the genus myothera, or ant-catchers. Many kinds of reptiles, both snakes and lizards, are ant-eaters; and, what is strangest of all, there are insects that prey upon them.

No wonder, then, with such a variety of enemies, that the ants are kept within proper limits, and are not allowed to overrun the earth.-Captain Mayne Reid.

LESSON LXXIII.—THE KITTEN AND THE FALLING LEAVES.

See the kitten on the wall,
Sporting with the leaves that fall—

Withered leaves-one-two-and three-
From the lofty elder tree!

Through the calm and frosty air Of this morning bright and fair, Eddying round and round they sink, Softly, slowly:-one might think, From the motions that are made, Every little leaf conveyedSylph or fairy hither tendingTo this lower world descending, Each invisible and mute, In his wav'ring parachute.

But the kitten-how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws, and darts! First at one, and then its fellow, Just as light, and just as yellow; There are many now-now oneNow they stop, and there are none. What intenseness of desire In her upturned eye of fire! With a tiger leap, half-way,

Now she meets the coming prey,

Let's it go as fast, and then

Has it in her power again.

Now she works with three or four,

Like an Indian conjuror;

Quick as he in feats of art,

Far beyond in joy of heart.

Were her antics played in th' eye
Of a thousand standers by,

Clapping hands, with shout and stare,
What would little Tabby care
For the plaudits of the crowd?

Far too happy to be proud;

Overwealthy in the treasure

Of her own exceeding pleasure.

Wordsworth.

LESSON LXXIV.-SPITZBERGEN.

It was at one o'clock in the morning of the 6th of August, 1856, that we came to an anchor in the silent harbour of English Bay, Spitzbergen.

And now, how shall I give you an idea of the wonderful panorama in the midst of which we found ourselves? I think, perhaps, its most striking feature was the stillness, and deadness, and impassibility of this new world; ice, and rock, and water surrounded us; not a sound of any kind interrupted the silence; the sea did not break upon the shore; no bird or any living thing was visible; the midnight sun-by this time muffled in a transparent mist-shed an awful mysterious lustre on glacier and mountain; no atom of vegetation gave token of the earth's vitality; an universal numbness and dumbness seemed to pervade the solitude. I suppose, in scarcely any other part of the world, is this appearance of deadness so strikingly exhibited. On the stillest summer day in England there is always perceptible an undertone of life thrilling through the atmosphere; and though no breeze should stir a single leaf, yet, in default of motion, there is always a sense of growth; but here not so much as a blade of grass was to be seen on the sides of the bald, excoriated hills. Primeval rocks and eternal ice constitute the landscape.

The anchorage where we had brought up is the best to be found, with the exception, perhaps, of Magdalena Bay, along the whole west coast of Spitzbergen; indeed, it is almost the only one where you are not liable to have

the ice set in upon you at a moment's notice. This bay is completely land-locked, being protected on its open side by Prince Charles's Foreland, a long island lying parallel with the mainland. Down towards either horn run two ranges of schistose rocks, about 1,500 feet high, their sides almost precipitous, and the topmost ridge as sharp as a knife, and as jagged as a saw; the intervening space is entirely filled up by an enormous glacier, which, descending with one continuous incline from the head of a valley on the right, and sweeping like a torrent round the roots of an isolated clump of hills in the centre, rolls at last into the sea. The length of the glacial river from the spot where it originated could not have been less than thirty to thirty-five miles, or its greatest breadth less than nine or ten; but so completely did it fill up the higher end of the valley, that it was as much as you could do to distinguish the further mountains peeping up above its surface. The height of the precipice where it fell into the sea I should judge to have been about 120 feet. On the left a still more extraordinary sight presented itself. A kind of baby glacier actually hung suspended half way on the hill side, like a tear in the act of rolling down the furrowed cheek of the mountain.

The glaciers are the principal characteristic of the scenery in Spitzbergen; the bottom of every valley in every part of the island is occupied, and generally completely filled by them, enabling one to realize the look of England in her glacial period, when Snowdon was still being slowly lifted towards the clouds, and every valley in Wales was brimful of ice. But the glaciers in English Bay are by no means the largest in the island. We ourselves got a view, though a distant one, of ice rivers which must have been more extensive; and Dr.

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