habitations. … I bethink me of a Japanese poem:—
Yuku é naki:
Ari no sumai ya!
Go-getsu amé.
[Now the poor creature has nowhere to go! … Alas for the dwellings of the ants in this rain of the fifth month!]
But those big black ants in my garden do not seem to need any sympathy. They have weathered the storm in some unimaginable way, while great trees were being uprooted, and houses blown to fragments, and roads washed out of existence. Yet, before the typhoon, they took no other visible precaution than to block up the gates of their subterranean town. And the spectacle of their triumphant toil to-day impels me to attempt an essay on Ants.
I should have liked to preface my disquisitions with something from the old Japanese literature,—something emotional or metaphysical. But all that my Japanese friends were able to find for me on the subject,—excepting some verses of little worth,—was Chinese. This Chinese material consisted chiefly of strange stories; and one of them seems to me worth quoting,—faute de mieux.
