Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/715

. 20, 1862.] it. He said he would try and make some other excuse for my going, but I must go next day, positive. He told me if he did make an excuse for me to be very careful not to contradict him. I was very grateful to him. He is a kind good gentleman, and I shall always bless him for it. I did not go next day. I was kept by my mistress’s illness. She was very bad indeed. I did all I could for her. I hoped the Baron had forgotten and would let me stay. He sent for me two or three days afterwards. There was another gentleman with him. It was the doctor. He charged me with having given some stuff to my mistress to make her sick. Of course I denied it. I never gave her anything, I never had any quarrel with her at all. She was always very good-natured to me, but I did not like her much. I don’t know why. I think it was because she did not like master. I said I had given her nothing. No more I had. I never saw the bottle, and don’t know what it was. I cannot read at all. I saw master look at me, and he said something about two or three days ago. I knew then that he was making an excuse to send me away. He made signs at me to abide by what he said, and I did abide by it. The other gentleman was very hard, but of course he did not know. What the Baron said was given as a reason for my going away. That was all. The real reason was my taking the marmalade. If you ask the Baron he will tell you so. I hope you will tell him how grateful I am for his kindness to me.

a reasonable walk of my house there is a small wood which affords opportunities of watching the habits of many creatures. It is planted upon more than one kind of soil, so that a plentiful variety of plants is found within its limits, and, as a necessary consequence, many insects live upon the plants, predacious insects come to eat their harmless kinsfolk, and birds come to eat both the cannibals and their victims.

This place is a favourite resort of the wood-ants, which have built their fragile yet enduring nests in many sheltered spots, and have driven their wonderful paths through almost every part of the wood. For some years I have passed many pleasant hours every summer among the trees, and found the day only too short for the many observations that came under my notice. The best way to take advantage of a wood is to set out with the intention of watching some particular creature, and to give up one’s time exclusively to that single object; not failing, of course, to mark any point of interest that may present itself respecting other beings that may come within ken, and to jot it down in a note-book.

This insect, which may be known by its large size and reddish thorax, is one of the stingless ants, though it is quite as formidable an antagonist as the species which possess those sharp and envenomed darts. For, though the wood ant has no sting, it yet has a store of poison, and can use its venomous powers effectively, though in a more roundabout manner than is adopted by the sting-bearers. It is a must fierce and determined creature, the sense of fear seeming to have been wholly omitted from its composition. It will attack any thing and any body without the least hesitation, and possesses all the courage without the cunning exhibited by the Lilliputians in their memorable attack on the Man Mountain. For a man is to the wood-ant not only a moving mountain, but a moving world; and yet there is not a single ant that will not attack a man, if it fancies him to be in too close proximity to its residence.

Urged by some wonderful instinct, it makes at once for the nearest unprotected skin, bites fiercely with its sharp and calliper-shaped jaws, and simultaneously bending its body so as to bring the tip of the abdomen to bear upon the wound, squirts a small drop of its poison into the cavity, producing for the time, a sharp and painful smarting sensation. The pain, however, is very transient, although, at the moment it is inflicted, the pang is quite as severe as that inflicted by the sting of a wasp. Nor is this its only mode of attack. The wood ant is able to eject this poisonous substance to some distance, and if a nest be broken open, and a bare hand placed within the aperture, it will be speedily covered with a thousand little dots of pungent fluid, and if the skin be very sensitive, will smart as though it had been plunged into a bunch of stinging nettles. The scent of this fluid is strongly acid, like highly concentrated vinegar, and even at the distance of a yard from the nest produces an unpleasant sensation in the throat and nostrils. One of my friends, desirous of testing personally the peculiar scent, made a breach in the nest of the wood-ant, and put his face to the hole. Scarcely had he approached within three inches than he started back, vowing that the ants had stung him all over his chin, and could not for some time be convinced of his error.

This pungent liquid is acid in its nature, and, when analysed, is found to contain two kinds of acid, one peculiar to the insect and called formic acid, and the other the substance termed malic acid, which gives to the juice of apples its peculiar flavour. Not only has it the scent of vinegar, but a very good substitute for that useful article is often made by steeping successive measures of the wood-ant in boiling water. The substance called chloroform owes its name to the similarity between its constituent elements and those of formic acid. In chemical language, though not in chemical formula, formic acid consists of two atoms carbon, one atom hydrogen, and two atoms oxygen; while the composition of chloroform is two atoms carbon, one atom hydrogen, and three atoms chlorine. It may be casually remarked that formic acid can be produced by artificial means.

The nest of this insect is a wonderfully large structure when the size of the tiny architects is taken into consideration, and the regularity with which their interior is parcelled out into chambers and galleries, is not less surprising. It is made of little pieces of stick, dried leaves, broken stems of the dry fern, and always contains the berries of the mountain ash, if any tree of this kind should happen to be within a moderate distance. When I first observed the dog berries amid the heap of leaves