“In one respect they are like their African brothers and that is in their fondness for travel. Every once in a while they make up their minds to emigrate and then they fly in swarms of millions——”
“What?” interrupted Frank, “do you mean to say they fly? I never knew that an ant had wings.”
“Of course they have,” said Dick, “they often have to cross rivers to get to their new home. How could they do that without wings?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” hummed Shorty:
“The bed bug has no wings at all
But he gets there just the same.”
A rather severe glance from Dick quenched Phil’s exuberant spirits which had all come back to him since his ducking.
“Now,” continued Dick, “these swarms are sometimes so vast that they darken the sun in certain localities. Men working on high buildings have been surrounded and almost blinded by them. While these emigrations last they are a bother, if not a peril, and the only ones that are really happy are the fish in the brooks and rivers over which they pass. Sometimes the surface is fairly black with them and the trout and little troutlings have the time of their lives. Once the flight is ended, however, and the new locality chosen, the wings disappear. Nature has no use for needless things and from that time on the air knows them no more. The carpenter ants get busy right away. The place is marked off as accurately as a surveyor marks out a plot in the suburbs of a city. The queen ant is given a royal room apart from all the others. She is a good mother and takes the best of care of her little ones. As they grow older, they in turn help the queen to care for their little brothers and sisters. They are excessively neat and clean in their personal habits. They spend hours preening and combing and cleaning until they are immaculate——”
“Regular dudes,” muttered Jim.
“Well,” said Tom, “that’s something that will never be laid up against you, Jim.”