The Most Invincible Creature in the World.
The lion is the king of beasts, but all of his magnificent strength and ferocity would avail him nothing when ho faces a mcro ant. Rut this ant is not the usual kind which peacefully goes about its domestic rhuies day by day. It is the terrible driver, or soldier ant, said to be the most invincible creature in the world. M. Coillard, a French missionary in the Barotse Valley of South Central Africa, thus writes of these terrors there : — "One sees them busy in innumerable battalions, ranked and disciplined, winding along like a broad black ribbon ofwatoicd silk. Whence come they '? Where are they going? Nothing can stop them, nor can any object change their route. If it is an inanimate object they turn aside and p-us on. If it is the living they assail it venomously, crowding one on top of the other lo the attack, while the main army passes on, businesslike and silent. Is the obstacle a trench or a stream of water, then they form themselves at its edge into a compact mass. Is this a deliberate assembly? Probably, foi soon the mass stive and moves on, cros-ies the trench or stream and continues in its incessant and mysterious march.*
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ST19040130.2.60
Bibliographic details
Southland Times, Issue 19264, 30 January 1904, Page 1 (Supplement)
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212The Most Invincible Creature in the World. Southland Times, Issue 19264, 30 January 1904, Page 1 (Supplement)
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