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Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 139, 8 March 1929, Page 12

Mark Twain had a very low opinion of the intelligence of ants.' “He is the hardest working creature in the world —when anybody is looking—but his leather-headedness is the point I make against him. He goes out foraging; he makes a capture, and then what‘does he do? Go home? No; he goes anywhere but home. He doesn’t know where home is. His home may be only three feet away; no matter, he can’t find it. He climbs over every pebble on his way, laboriously dragging the load.; he hauls it to the top of a weed, drops or climbs down again, meets a companion and each seizes opposite ends and pulls. Finally the useless burden is discarded, and the two go off to seek something even more difficult to handle.. It is strange beyond comprehension that so manifest a humbug as the ant has been able to fool so many .nations, and to keep it up so many ages without being found out.” Despite Mark Twain, tht? ant has still many wholehearted admirers. A,French savant has recently discovered a new activity which goes to show that it still keeps well abreast with human civilisation. It has started a fire -brigade. The naturalist in question stated that he placed a lighted taper on the top of an ant-hill. A detachment of ants af bpce appeared and squirted liquid formic acid on the flame and so extinguished it. Several of the heroic “firemen” were killed, while one was sedragging apother froip