Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, November, 1878

On excavating the nests we found granaries of seed scattered irregularly throughout to the depth of twenty-two inches below the surface of the ground: some were near the surface, and a few sprouted seeds were scattered about in the mound. The mound is usually not more than four to six inches above the level of the ground.

The great majority of nests that I have found are in the low pine barrens—so low that on reaching the depth of two feet the water runs into the cavity like a spring, and stands above some of the granaries. Notwithstanding this wet locality, I found no sprouted seeds in the deeper store-rooms, but only in the warmer mound. On sunny days the larvæ are brought up into the mound and deposited in chambers near the surface, where they receive the benefit of the sun's rays. On cool, cloudy days and in the early morning I found no larvæ near the surface. If the ants are intelligent enough to treat the larvæ in this way, why should they not store seeds where they will not sprout? And when they need to sprout them in order to obtain the sugar they contain, it would take no more wisdom to treat the seed as they do the larvæ—bringing them near the surface to obtain the right degree of heat for the required result.

The little workers seem very determined not to allow any green thing to grow on their mounds. Cassia and croton and many other plants start to grow from seeds which the ants have dropped, but they are always cut down and destroyed if too near the mound, though allowed to grow at a little distance; so that a botanist would be astonished at the great variety of plants within a small area if not aware of the source from which they came. I sometimes found small shrubs of Kalmia hirsuta and Hypericums entirely dead on the mounds, the roots completely girdled in many places. It is very amusing to watch them in their efforts to destroy grass and other plants. Their determined persistence is remarkable: they cut off the tender blades and throw them away. But they do not stop here: the roots must be exterminated; so several dig around the plant, throwing the earth backward, and after making it bare they cut and girdle the roots until the plant is killed.

1. With well-formed teeth.

2. Partially developed.

3. Entirely obsolete.

MANDIBLES OF THE HARVESTING-ANT.

Early in March the ants in the jar seemed to have completed their domicile. At first, several chambers were visible through the glass, and the galleries leading to them, but gradually the light was all shut out by placing little particles of earth against the glass, thus depriving me of the opportunity of watching their movements within the nest. So I now took the jar to the barrens, and set it by the side of a nest which was about a mile distant from where most of the ants were obtained. Here I carefully broke it, and took the thin shell of glass from around the nest, which did not fall, but stood six inches in height and eighteen inches in circumference. With a large knife I removed a thin layer of earth, which revealed three admirable chambers with galleries leading from one to the other. Immediately below there were five chambers well filled with ants, and below these other chambers were scattered irregularly throughout, with only thin partitions between.

At various times I had given the ants moistened sugar on the thick curved leaves of the live-oak, and several of these had been covered while the ants were making their excavations. Two of the leaves were three inches below the surface, and the ants had utilized them by making the inner curved surface answer for the floor and sides of fine chambers; and here a large number of ants, both soldiers and workers, were crowded together. In other chambers I found the larvæ, which were greatly increased in size since I had placed them in the jar; and the larvæ of the carpenter-ant were being reared, as I found some smaller than any I had introduced belonging to the harvester.

Very soon a great crowd of excited ants came from the hill near which I had broken the jar, and began to transport the larvæ, and also the mature ants, to their own dominions. There was no fighting: the ants from the jar submitted to being carried, not offering the least resistance. A small worker would often take hold of a large soldier, sometimes pushing, sometimes dragging, her through the sand, and she would be as quiet as if dead or dying; but if we touch the little worker she leaves her burden and rushes about to see what the interference means; and now the soldier straightens up, as bright and lively as the rest, and after passing her fore legs over her head and body, goes of her own accord into the new nest, meeting with no opposition. Some of the ants would coil up and allow themselves to be carried easily. Others were led along by an antenna or a leg, in either case manifesting no resistance. For three hours I watched the proceeding, and could see no fighting. It looked precisely as if the inhabitants of the jar realized their helpless condition, and gladly submitted to be taken prisoners or to become partners with this new firm.

I left them, and after the lapse of two hours again visited the spot. The seeds that had been in the jar were now being transferred to the other nest, and two new entrances at the base of the mound were being made. And now every little while an ant would be ejected from the nest. One worker would bring another out and lay her down, often not more than three inches away from the door, but, so far as I could see, she was in no wise injured. Her first movement was to make herself presentable by passing her fore legs over her head and body: as soon as this was completed she returned within the nest. But there was one large soldier which the whole community seemed combined against. She was led or dragged away from the entrance of the nest eight times, and each time left at the base of the mound among the rubbish. Sometimes she was led or carried by one alone, sometimes two or three would conduct her, and then leave her, when she would at once proceed to make her toilet; which completed, she would again return to the door of the nest, when she would be again conducted away, offering no resistance. I now picked her up, which made her very fierce. She seized my glove with her powerful mandibles, and held on with a persistency equal to the most vicious species, at the same time trying to use her sting. As soon as I could free her from the glove I secured her, and on reaching home placed her under the microscope, and found she was not injured and had strong teeth in her mandibles.

On the next day I returned her to the nest, and again she was met by the indignant police at the door and conducted away. With her strong mandibles she could have crushed any number of her small assailants, but in no instance did she show the least disposition to rebel against the indignities to which she was subjected. She was often dragged away with her back on the ground and her legs coiled up, apparently helpless. If all the soldiers had been treated in this way, it would not have been so remarkable, but so far as I could see the rest were allowed to remain, going in and out of the nest as if taking a survey of their new surroundings.

For five months I had these ants under almost constant observation, and yet I was unable to make out the true position of the soldiers in the colony. They stay mostly within the nest. On the warmest days a few will come out and walk leisurely around the mound. They are not scattered irregularly through the nest, but seem to be housed together in large chambers. In one of these chambers I found a wingless queen in their midst. It seemed very fitting for a queen to be surrounded by Amazon soldiers; but, alas! they seemed more like maids of honor than soldiers, for they forsook the royal lady without making an effort to defend her. Not so, however, with the little workers: they rallied around her, ready to guard her with their lives, and no doubt would have succeeded had it been any ordinary foe.

This phenomenon—the soldiers and queens with smooth mandibles—is very puzzling, and has excited much interest among naturalists both in this country and in Europe. I sent specimens to Mr. Charles Darwin, which he forwarded to Mr. Frederick Smith of the British Museum (who, Mr. Darwin informs me, is the highest authority in Europe on ants and other Hymenoptera). Mr. Smith says: "Your observations on the structural differences in the mandibles of this ant are quite new to me." I also sent specimens to the eminent naturalist Dr. Auguste Forel of Munich, who, like Mr. Smith, had never observed this feature of the mandibles in any ant; but he has a theory to account for it—that the smooth mandibles have been worn down by labor. If this theory is true, how can we account for the fact that other ants do not wear down their teeth? The chitinous covering of this harvesting-ant is firm and hard. The stage forceps of my microscope closes with a spring, and in studying this ant I have put thousands of individuals to the test, holding them in the forceps to examine their mandibles, and in no instance do I recollect seeing one injured, while many other species are easily injured by the forceps. Among these are the two large species of carpenter-ant before mentioned, which work in stumps or fallen timber. These ants all have well-developed teeth, and the shell-like covering enveloping the body is much thinner than that of the harvesting-ant.

If it be urged that hard wood will not wear down the teeth like mining in the sandy soil, I can bring forward another member of this family (Camponotus socius, Roger), which lives in the ground, and whose mining and tunnelling are on a much more extensive scale than those of the harvesting-ant. The formicary of this Camponotus often extends over several square rods, with large entrances at various points, all connected by underground galleries, requiring a great amount of labor to construct them; while each colony of the harvesting-ant has a close, compact nest or formicary, requiring much less work to construct it. The worker major of Camponotus socius is very large—larger than the soldier of the harvesting-ant. The formicaries of the two species are often in close contact, so that the nature of the soil is precisely the same. I have examined thousands of Camponotus socius, and in no instance have I found the teeth worn down.

There is still another difficulty in the way of Dr. Forel's theory. Careful observations have revealed the fact that all the harvesting-ants that engage in work of any kind are armed with teeth. I took thirty soldiers with smooth mandibles, put them in a glass jar with every facility for making a nest, but they refused to work, scorned all my offers of food, and remained huddled together for three days. I then introduced several workers minor, and they immediately commenced tunnelling the earth and making chambers, into which the lazy soldiers crawled, meeting with no opposition from these industrious little creatures. My experiments did not stop here. I now took about a hundred specimens—soldiers and a few workers major, the last with partially-developed teeth—and placed them in a jar. Some of these made feeble attempts to construct a nest, but they did not store away seeds, and larvæ which I put in the jar they carried about as if not knowing what to do with them.

There is every appearance of an aristocracy among these humble creatures. The minors are the servants who do the work, while the queens and soldiers (especially the soldiers, which more nearly approach the queen in shape of head and mandibles) seem to live a life of comparative ease, and have their food brought to them by the minors. This may be the reason of the non-development of the teeth among the aristocracy. But how the same parent can produce such differing offspring—some born to a life of ease, with obsolete teeth, and others with well-developed teeth to do the work—is one of the mysteries in Nature. The only way to settle the point with regard to the mandibles beyond dispute is to find the pupæ of very young queens and soldiers, which I was unable to do during my stay in Florida. All the young were in the larval state.

    Mary Treat.

DOCTEUR ALPHÈGE

"MARCELLINE! Marcelline! viens m'aider: je souffre!"

The voice was thin and querulous, but painfully weak, and the stalwart, broad-shouldered negress to whom the cry was addressed had an anxious, startled look on her usually stolid face as she turned away from the open door and went into the sick room.

"My poor mistress," she said tenderly in French, raising in her arms as she spoke the attenuated form of the suffering woman before her and rearranging her pillows, "you feel very bad to-day: I knew you did just now when you were asleep and I heard you groaning. I wish—bon Dieu!—I wish I could do something for you."

The invalid made no reply for a minute, but gazed piteously up into the other's face. She was a woman of about fifty, who even in the last stages of emaciation and weakness showed traces of wonderful beauty. The sharp, drawn features were as clear and fine as those of a model, and even now the sweetness and brilliancy of her dark-blue eyes were little diminished. But pain of some kind and utter prostration held her in their grip, and she made several attempts to speak before she said, in a hoarse whisper, "Thou canst help me, child. Food, Marcelline! food, for the love of God!"

The negress started, knit her brows and murmured anxiously, "Oh, my dear mistress, anything but that! Think what would happen to me and my children if—if—"—she seemed almost afraid even to whisper the name, but sank her voice to the lowest tone as she continued—"if Mons. Alphège were to find me out. Attends!" she added aloud and coaxingly: "it will soon be time for your supper now: when the bell rings you are to have some milk, and the sun is almost down."

The sick woman groaned and lay quite still, but when, in a few minutes, a clanging plantation-bell rang the joyful announcement that the day's work was over, she grasped the milk which Marcelline brought her like one famished, and drained it without breathing. It was a short draught, after all, for the cup was only half full, but Marcelline turned away with a shiver from the imploring eyes and outstretched hands, which asked her to replenish it, and, as though unable to endure the sight of suffering which she could not alleviate, went out upon the open gallery and sat down on the steps.

The room was on the ground floor, and the house was an old-fashioned creole dwelling, long and low, with many doors and innumerable little staircases—everything in disorder and out of repair, and weeds and grass growing up to the threshold. There was a well-stocked and carefully-tended vegetable garden not a hundred yards off: the poultry-yards, dove-cotes and smoke-houses were as full as they could hold, and over yonder, just behind the tall picket fence, were corn-cribs bursting with corn and hay-lofts choked with hay. Fifty or sixty negro hovels, irregularly grouped together down by the bayou-side, and indistinctly seen in the fading twilight, contained about three hundred slaves, who, having trooped in from the field at the sound of the bell, were now eating pork and hominy as fast as they could swallow. But no one would have guessed that all this abundance was at hand, or that this was the homestead of one of the richest creole families in the State. Yet it was so. Old Madame Levassour—or Madame Hypolite, as she was invariably called—was not only the widow of a wealthy planter, but had been herself a great heiress, perhaps the greatest in the whole South, at the time of her marriage. The property had gone on appreciating, as slave property did in old times, and now that she was lying at the point of death, her two daughters, who had married brothers, and, like all true creoles, still lived at home with their mother, would soon be enormously rich. They were well off already by inheritance from their father, and each owned a valuable plantation and many slaves; but these were nothing compared to the possessions of their mother, who was an excellent business-woman, full of energy, prudence and moderation, and never weak or capricious, especially where the interests of others were concerned. She had always been a kind and indulgent mistress to her slaves, who loved her in return with passionate fidelity, and many were the sighs and tears their approaching change of owners produced among them. Her sons-in-law were educated men, of good birth and moderate fortune; but negroes are the best judges of character in the world, and there was not a trait or feeling concealed under the quiet, nonchalant exterior of Mons. Volmont Cherbuliez which they did not thoroughly understand. About his brother Alphège, who was a physician, there was more diversity of opinion. That he also was bad, cruel, dissipated, profoundly deceitful, there was no doubt in the minds of his future chattels, but what precise form his idiosyncrasies would take they felt to be uncertain, and gazed with terror—all the more acute for being somewhat vague—at his cold, impassive face. In the mean time, nothing could be more irreproachable than the demeanor of the two brothers. Dr. Alphège was known to be a man of great skill, a graduate of the medical schools of Paris and always interested in the practice of his profession. He devoted himself to his mother-in-law now with unfailing assiduity, and when her disease—which he pronounced to be a dangerous gastric affection—baffled his utmost efforts, he sent for advice and assistance even to New Orleans; which, thirty years ago in South-western Louisiana, was quite an enterprise. His fellow-physicians agreed with him in his management of the case, and the daughters and friends of Madame Hypolite, though deeply grieved by her illness, felt that nothing more could be done. As is usual in diseases of the stomach, her suffering was very great, and the most rigid care had to be exercised in the choice and administration of nourishment. On her food, said Dr. Alphège, he depended for the only hope of a cure: consequently, the rules which he laid down must be, and were, enforced in the most rigid manner. The penalty of transgressing his orders was always severe, but now the fiat went forth that any one of the nurses or attendants upon Madame Hypolite who should depart from his carefully-explained orders in the minutest particular should receive a punishment such as had never been administered in that household before.

One of the marked features of creole life was always the immense number of house-servants, and in a long illness such as Madame Hypolite was now experiencing many attendants and various nurses seemed a matter of course. Therefore the doctor's orders were doubly necessary, and would in all cases have been entirely correct, since the first element of good nursing is implicit obedience. Still, with all this care, she did not improve, and in the evening of which we write her two daughters, Mesdames Volmont and Alphège (for a creole never gets his or her last name except in legal documents), were sitting on the gallery not far from where Marcelline crouched on the steps, rocking themselves backward and forward to keep off the mosquitoes and talking over the aspect of affairs. They were both extremely pretty women, and very much alike. Euphrosyne (Madame Volmont) was a year or two the older, but still not more than twenty-two or three. She had been married at fourteen, and her oldest boy was nearly eight, but she seemed not more than sixteen now; while Clothilde (Madame Alphège), who, although married at the same age, was childless, looked even younger; and any stranger seeing them this evening in their soft white cambric dresses, little high-heeled red slippers and floating ribbons, would have taken them for a couple of pretty, dark-eyed, lazy school-girls enjoying their holiday.

Marcelline listened to them as they talked, at first with the same intent, peculiar expression she had worn in the sick room, but gradually her features relaxed as she heard their harmless chatter, subdued so as not to disturb the sufferer near by, but full of little childish gossip and kindly details of daily life. After talking for a few minutes about Dr. Alphège's last report, which was that some slight improvement was visible, Clothilde asked her sister with much interest if she had finished the novena she was making, and on being answered in the affirmative said that she would begin one herself on Monday.

"Bien!" said Euphrosyne. "If you will make a novena I will burn two more candles, and get Père Ramain to say three masses for my intention in honor of the Blessed Trinity."

"Say the novena with me," suggested Clothilde, fanning and rocking, and speaking less distinctly than usual because her mouth was full of candy.

"Indeed, I cannot," replied Euphrosyne: "my knees are black and blue now. I told Père Ramain yesterday that if he could just see them he would not make me kneel again for a week."

As she spoke a horse's step was heard on the grass, and Volmont Cherbuliez galloped lightly up over the turf. As he jumped down and threw the reins to half a dozen nearly naked little black fellows who were at his heels, his wife rose to meet him affectionately, and with her hand on his shoulder said in a low tone of genuine delight, "Cher ami, you will be so glad to hear that mamma is really better to-night!" She was not looking at him, but even in the darkness, which was now that of a starlit summer evening, Marcelline could see the slight start and change of expression with which he heard her. He said nothing, however, but kissed her hand with as much gallantry as though he was still faisant la cour to "mademoiselle," and they all passed into the dining-room together. This, as was the custom in all such houses, was also the common sitting-room of the family, or rather, when the weather was too cold to sit on the galleries and they had occasion to leave their bedrooms, it was here they met. As a rule, the women invariably occupied their sleeping apartments, and never thought of leaving them except for the open gallery or at meal-times. Here they received their friends, sewed, embroidered, gossiped and told their beads. Two large double beds were the ordinary complement of each room, and, what with large family connections and frequent visitors, it was rare indeed to find one not in use. Owing to this habit on the part of the women, and the fact that no Creole planter ever spent two consecutive minutes in his house during the daytime if he could possibly help it, the dining-room was as dreary a spot as could be imagined. A long, narrow table covered with oilcloth and surmounted by a huge punkah, a number of straight wooden chairs and a square red cupboard comprised all the furniture, the whole dimly lighted by two candles. The Cherbuliez family, however, as they sat down to supper, seemed to feel no deficiency, and ate and drank merrily, especially when Madame Volmont's three children came in and were bountifully helped to everything on the table, including ripe figs, cucumbers, melons and gumbo choux. As they were all lingering over the table and wondering why Alphège did not come in, he suddenly appeared, looking very pale and tired. Without stopping even to say "Good-evening," he passed directly through into the room beyond, where Madame Hypolite was lying, and was heard questioning Marcelline rapidly as to his patient's condition. When he at last sat down to his supper he looked like a man overworked bodily indeed, but with a great weight suddenly removed from his mind; and Clothilde, who was an enfant gâtée to him as to others, exclaimed joyfully, "Oh, Alphège, maman is really better—elle va se guérir, elle est hors de danger, n'est ce pas?" And she came behind him and put her arms round his neck as he tried to eat, and gave him a joyful embrace.

Whatever the dark secrets of his soul might be, at which so many dimly guessed, Alphège Cherbuliez was invariably tender and considerate to his wife; and now, as he gently disengaged the little hands that were throttling him from his throat, he said kindly, but with a gravity which always awed and restrained her, "I think she is better, my dear, but it is impossible to predict in such cases; and all we can do is to wait and hope."

As he spoke, his brother, who had lighted a cigarette and was sitting opposite with his youngest child on his knee, looked up. The gaze of the two men met. On the bronzed cheek of Volmont came a slight flush, and his eyes had an expression for the moment of fear and appeal. But the dark, handsome face of Alphège maintained its cold, inscrutable composure, and the look before which his brother's slowly fell was magnetic in its steady strength.

A little later, as they smoked together on the steps their last cigar before retiring, Volmont asked in a sudden low whisper, "Did you succeed?" and Alphège said slowly aloud, "Yes: they will wait two weeks longer."

"Hadst thou trouble, my brother?"

The other paused a moment, and then said, "Yes: they were inclined to insist. They have been a long time out of their money, mon ami, and when this danger is over we shall do well to avoid another—with them."

"What did you promise?" asked Volmont, as if reassured by his brother's tone.

"I promised," said Alphège, carefully rolling the end of his cigar, but this time dropping his voice, "that in a fortnight the notes should be taken up."

It was midnight, and the house was entirely silent and dark except where one shaded candle burned in the sick room. Down at the "quarters," as the negro cabins were called, every one was literally locked in slumber, and it must have been a loud and prolonged noise which should have awakened those tired sleepers. But some one was stirring, for all that, and had the moon been shining ever so faintly it would have been a dangerous task for those two gliding, crouching figures to move across the open green beyond the stable as they were doing. But the night was safely dark: a soft gray scud from the Gulf was flying rapidly in, obscuring even the dim starlight, and no one saw them as they passed through the turngate in the fence and sat down close to the water's edge under the overhanging trunk of a huge water-oak.

"Now we are safe," said the woman, throwing back her coarse shawl; "and I tell you, Pierre, you must listen to me, and I must speak, or some day I shall just burst out and go screaming my dreadful news from one end of the parish to the other."

The speaker was Marcelline, and the man who listened to her a huge raw-boned mulatto of that square-jawed, vindictive-looking type which is the manifest offspring of foul oppression and long-continued wrong.

But he shrank appalled from the tremendous energy of the woman beside him. "Hush—sh!" he said in a warning whisper and with an apprehensive glance into the still darkness around. "Don't talk so loud, you fool! or I'll choke the d–d black blood out of you."

The woman lowered her voice, but paid no other heed to his menace as she went on in the same earnestly-excited manner. "Listen, Pierre!" she said, grasping him by the arm and speaking with an amount of decision which even he could not withstand. "Do you love la bonne maîtresse? Do you care for her to live or die? Dis-moi, dis ce que tu veux!"

The man answered slowly, as if the words were forced from him against his will, but still with an accent of truth and a certain amount of energy: "Love her? Jesu! yes, I do love her. It seems drôle for one of us to talk about loving these cursed whites, who treat us worse than dogs; but, for all that, I do love madame."

The woman almost shook him as she said in a whisper of concentrated fury, "Who saved your life, Pierre Lambas, when you were perishing with smallpox? Who went to New Orleans to buy your wife and children from a cruel master and bring them here to you? Who watched by Sophie when she was in convulsions?"

Her voice broke and her fingers relaxed their hold, but this time Pierre answered without hesitation: "C'était-elle, je le sais bien—I know it well."

"Then," pursued Marcelline, "you are willing to stand by and see her slowly murdered, inch by inch, by this white-faced devil, who leans over her and professes to love her, but is killing her—killing her, Dieu des dieux!—with hunger and thirst?" Her voice shook so that she could scarcely speak as she concluded.

"How do I know," asked Pierre slowly, after a long pause, "that what you think about this may not be a mistake?" Marcelline made an impatient gesture, but he went calmly on: "They say Mons. Alphège is a good doctor, and that he is fond of sa belle-mère. How can I take a man's life on a mere suspicion?"

She almost flew at him in her frenzy, but the darkness so shielded her that he did not see the movement, which was as well. She controlled herself instantly, and only said in reply, "Thou hast not been always so careful of white life, mon ami—so unwilling to shed white blood."