—Most people regard ants as a nuisance, especially in a garden or at a picnic, but the natives of Burma have found a use for them. That country grows and exports sandalwood, one of the most valuable and beautiful timbers in the world. The greater part of every tree felled is useless, however, for only the fragrantscented heart has any commercial value, and to transport the whole log would make even that not worth the cost of removal. So the trees, after being stripped of their branches, are allowed to lie where they have fallen. The soft, sappy wood, which is useless in commerce, attracts the billions of ants who infest the forest, and to whom it is a tit-bit. In helping themselves the ants help the sandalwood merchant, for they leave the hard heart of the trunk stripped of all its worthless integument, and thus do for nothing the work of man human labourers.
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Otago Witness, Issue 3859, 28 February 1928, Page 32
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155Untitled Otago Witness, Issue 3859, 28 February 1928, Page 32
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