Some of the wood is left free so the air may get at it and burn it enough to make heat enough to distil the pitch from the rest of it. This is gathered into barrels and is black because of the smoke that gets into it. It was this sort of tar that Benjamin Franklin had his experience with one time in Philadelphia. He was running along on the tops of tar barrels on the wharf one fine day with his Sunday clothes on. The head of one barrel was not in good condition, and so Benjamin went down into it. The next issue of his paper had a very amusing account of the accident in which Franklin used his powers to make puns to great advantage in making fun at his own expense.

ANTS. — Would you like to get a clean skeleton of any small animal? Place the body near or upon an ant hill and the little workers will clean it off for you perfectly, picking every bone as clean as if they were under contract with a forfeit for every scrap of flesh, skin, or sinew left upon any bone. They like meat so well that they will attack animals that are many times larger than themselves and carry the work to a successful end. There are three kinds of ants in an ant hill — males, females, and neuters. The males and females have wings and do no work to speak of. They are always waited upon very carefully by the neuters who have no wings, but are noted for their industry, skill, and strength. It has been said that the ant stores up large quantities of grain in the summer for winter use. Whoever said that was not well acquainted with his subject. In winter the ants neither eat nor work. Some of the neuters have their jaws, or mandibles, made much larger than the rest.

These are the soldiers, and they fight with greater fierceness than any other creatures. Huber, the blind naturalist who told the world so many astonishing things about bees, describes a great fight he once saw between two colonies of these little warriors. "I shall not say what lighted up discord between these two republics, the one as populous as the other. The two armies met midway between their respective residences. Their serried columns reached from the field of battle to the nest, and were two feet in width. The field of battle, which extended over a space of two or three square feet, was strewn with dead bodies and wounded; it was also covered with venom, and exhaled a penetrating odor.

The struggle began between two ants, which locked themselves together with their mandibles, while they raised themselves upon their legs. They quickly grasped each other so tightly that they rolled one over the other in the dust. When night came they stopped fighting, but the next morning they went at it again and piled the ground with slain and wounded." Their stings hurt because they carry a liquid that is like that found in nettles and in the hairs and other parts of certain caterpillars. This is called formic acid, and is made by chemists for certain purposes. The red ant dislikes to work if he can get slaves to do it for him. Perhaps we should say if she can get it done for her, because these neuters are rather more like females than like male ants. They make war purposely to get into the homes of other colonies to carry away their eggs and baby ants. They bring these up to wait upon them. When they go on a journey the slaves have to carry their owners, and sometimes they even feed them until they refuse to feed themselves. They have been known to die of hunger with plenty of food within easy reach, but with no slave at hand to place it before them. In going out to fight for the offspring of other ants they go in regular columns, and those that are left after the slaughter return home in the same order, their solid trains sometimes extending more than a hundred feet. Some ants keep cows. Plant lice have honeydew in their bodies, and when well fed they give out a great deal of it.

Ants are fond of it. They sometimes confine the plant lice, feed them, and milk the honeydew from the bodies of their captors. A German scientist named Simon, has recently returned from Australia with some great stories about ants. He says he suffered much from their attacks. In trying to get rid of them in many ways he at last hit upon the idea of spreading a poison where they would have to pass across it. He used prussiate of potash which is sometimes used in photography. Another name for it is cyanide of potassium. He says, "How astonished was I when I saw the whole surface of the heap strewn with dead ants like a battlefield. The piece of cyanide, however, had totally disappeared. More than one-half of the community had met death in this desperate struggle, but still the death-defying courage of the heroic little creatures had succeeded in removing the fatal poison, the touch of which must have been just as disagreeable to them as it was dangerous. Recklessly neglecting their own safety, they had carried it off little by little, covering every step with a corpse.