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 venture, the survivors still clinging doggedly to their booty.

As Formica was one of the wisest, most efficient and most courageous citizens of the community, she was usually hunting and foraging farther afield than most of her comrades.

Sometimes, she being inveterately hostile to all other ants except those of her own tribe, she got into savage duels, from which she always came off victorious, though frequently not without scars. Once in a while, moreover, she was rash enough to tackle a quarry too powerful and pugnacious for her—a nimble hunting spider or a savage little bronze scavenger beetle with jaws as destructive as her own. When she made a mistake of this sort she was driven to using the pungent venom at the tip of her abdomen in order to confuse the foe and enable her to escape.

Being thus endowed beyond her fellows with wisdom and quick perception to direct her courage, Formica would probably have lived to follow the fortunes of her tribe through several eventful summers had it not been for her restless and intrepid curiosity. She was of the stuff of which explorers are made. One day, adventuring through a patch of blueberry scrub many yards upon the forest side of the fence, she came