Show Out Door in the West Sketches of Natural History in Rocky Mountain Edited by J. of in the University ol AK S THAT MAKE f I The Foolish Ants are as foolish in some respects as human beings They have enemies enough of their yet they fight with one Besides being the favorite food of many a small lays her eggs upon them to hatch and flourish as parasites upon their They are also at times attacked by in case Lubbock notes that the others never per-form the kindly office of removing a pest from a comrade when the ant cannot do it for herselt Many of the neutrals are of two called major and minor the disparity in some cases being Some of the major workers are extremely large leaded and have been called but this is not yet accounted They seem to-act j as guides to moving columns or as the 1 closing the door from within simply by thrusting large head into the Ants fight by using I their The most noted of the 1 the Amazon has very power-I fa Pointed If attacked she simply takes her demy's head between her and then the enemy If the Amazon closes her Ping her adversary's A delicate but active Formica attacks in serried wl will engage a larger species and hold the enemy while another will get upon her back and saw off her Some species use their and even eject their poison for a short Degeneracy of the Ant long keeping of slaves lose habituated o the L both their bodily strength and their instinctive The species called is almost entirely dependent on its thus presenting a striking example of the effects of Their bodily structure is so changed that mandibles have lost their and have become mere deadly weapons but useless except in They have lost the greater part of their their that TRUE ANTS of wi notice the larga A true side view the two iare compound less male notice Dorsal view ol flight their domestic habits for of the power their all this being for care hey show no their industry-they take no part m daily if the colony changes i s are f v larvae and pupae and a supply of honey in a moved the larvae a but could not even eat the sugar and many died of hunger in two could do but the naturalist then placed one of their black slaves in their and it immediately formed a chamber in the gathered together the extricated several young ants that were ready to quit the condition of and preserved the life of the remaining So with another Tt is so weak that its power to make slaves is a On the other hand another though similarly helpless and is Lubbock tells and in some respects while our western slave-making Formica seems to old slaves only at and retains its bodily and mental Our slave-maker to terrify its and is satisfied when they leavin pupae which it secures for future Unlike its relative P. which worries its slain P. our does not do and unlike most other slave-holding it does not sensibly degenerate from lack of The American It has indeed been imagined that the life of the or the wasp as far as nature the idea of Not only is this an entire but in those very instances in which this idea is thought to be we find no no only co-operation and mutual But even in the life-histories of the various kinds of hymenoptera we discover the best examples from nature to prove that the American idea democracy is superior to any form of Nature knows no no and she puts her ban upon What seems an accredited aristocracy among the ants turns out to be only an The queen ant or bee is no She is the most prodigious worker among them She is great because of the service she She is elected to her position in the first and then held to it by the most perfect in which she both merits and enjoys universal Doctor Tree Enos A. in Saturday Evening Although the eagle has the emblematic place of honor in the United the downy woodpecker is as the most useful bird Of the seven and sixty-six kinds of birds in America his services are most helpful to He destroys destructive forest Long ago nature selected the woodpecker to be the caretaker the physician and surgeon of the tree This is a stupendous Forests are extensive and are formed of hundreds of species of The American woodpeckers have the super- i vision of uncounted acres that are forested with more than six hundred kinds of A With the exception of the California big each tree species is preyed upon by and many species by of injurious and deadly In this incessant struggle with insects the woodpecker has helpful assistance from sixty other bird Though the woodpecker gives general attention to hundreds of kinds of he specializes on th ose which injure the trees which require a surgical operation to He is a distinguished the tools for tree surgery are to his keeping and with these he each year performs innumerable successful surgical operations upon our friends the Now and then all the conditions are favorable for the or the woodpecker may be persecuted and lose some of his family so despite his utmost he fails to make the rounds of his forest and the result an outbreak of with wide So important are these birds that the of a single one may insects to multiply and waste acres of The Hairy Woodpecker During the periods in which the insects are held in check the woodpecker ranges through the inspecting tree Many during their tireless rounds of search and I have followed them for One morning in Missouri a Downy alighted against base of an apple tree within a few feet of where I was He with an undulating flight and swept in sideways toward the as though being 1 jj struck For For a a moment moment he he stuck he then to sidle around and up the m and then he tapped with his bill or else stopped into a bark cavity He devoured J w peer an insect e a spider and a of some kind before ascending to the first just below the point of a limb's attachment he ed-ed giving the tree trunk a rattling patter of tapS Hs He was feeling for something with sound Presently a spot sounded to his Adjusting he rained blows with his pickax bill upon tilting his head and directing the blows with an apparently automatic now and then giving a side-pe with his bill probably to tear off a splinter or throw off a In six minutes a fat grub was Then he enlarged the hole and slightly deepened it he momentarily thrust his head into the hole and his bill into a cavity with a backward tug h pulled his head then his and at last his extended tongue with a grub impaled upon its barbed This grub was dragged he bottom of a crooked gallery at a point more than three inches beyond the bottom of the pecked A useful this tongue of his a extendable Four Hours' In another tree he uncovered a feast of ants and their Once a grasshopper alighted against another tree trunk up which he was Downy seized him In one treetop he consumed an entire tent caterpillar In four hours he examined the larger limbs and many of the smaller ones of one hundred and thirty-eight apple In this time he made twenty-two five of which were Among the insects devoured were their and their a a moth or and a colony of I followed him closely and frequently was within a few feet of Often I saw his or rather one eye at a and a number of times I imagined him about to look round with a merry fly for he frequently acted like a happy child who is closely watching you while all the time merrily pretending jot to see in all those four he did not w a single thing which showed that he knew of my harness of even of my existence Examining each tree in he moved down a long and at the end flew without the slightest pause to the first tree in the next From here he examined J hue of trees diagonally across the orchard to the tarther Here he followed along the outside until he flew The line of his roin the time I first saw him until he flew a big letter N. ring a windstorm in a pine forest a dead tree fell er e and a flying limb knock a th earth by my f On reviving in my hands he 3 showed but opened he p J when T t I M to dive to the a tree this he tWenty feet Up though ft g had LIT away and I were only a |