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noun
Ant  n.  (Zool.) A hymenopterous insect of the Linnaean genus Formica, which is now made a family of several genera; an emmet; a pismire. Note: Among ants, as among bees, there are neuter or working ants, besides the males and females; the former are without wings. Ants live together in swarms, usually raising hillocks of earth, variously chambered within, where they maintain a perfect system of order, store their provisions, and nurture their young. There are many species, with diverse habits, as agricultural ants, carpenter ants, honey ants, foraging ants, amazon ants, etc. The white ants or Termites belong to the Neuroptera.
Ant bird (Zool.), one of a very extensive group of South American birds (Formicariidae), which live on ants. The family includes many species, some of which are called ant shrikes, ant thrushes, and ant wrens.
Ant rice (Bot.), a species of grass (Aristida oligantha) cultivated by the agricultural ants of Texas for the sake of its seed.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ant" Quotes from Famous Books



... an Arab proverb which runs: "When God wishes to destroy an ant he gives it wings." The Kaiser was to be given power for his own destruction. But what has happened? Absolutely nothing of these evil prophecies. In 1884 Bismarck was saying to Gerhard Rohlfs, the African explorer: "The main thing ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... sleep, he dreamed. One day dinner was kept waiting for him. "I have just come," said he, as he entered, "from the funeral of an ant; I followed the procession to the cemetery, and I escorted the family home." It has been said that La Fontaine knew nothing of natural history; he knew and loved animals; up to his time, fable-writers had been, merely philosophers or satirists; he was the first who was a poet, unique not only ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... members elected to the Commune on the 26th of March and the 16th of April, only forty-seven now remain:—Amouroux, Ant. Arnaud, Assy, Babick, Billioray, Clement, Champy, Chardon, Chalain, Demay, Dupont, Decamp, Dereure, Durant, Delescluze, Eudes, Henry Fortune, Ferre, Gambon, Geresme, Paschal Grousset, Johannard, Ledroit, Langevin, Lonclas, Mortier, Leo Meiller, Martelet, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... carpenter, respectable men with money stored away in their broad belts—portions of that great army of Tyrolese who, possessing neither trade nor manufactures in their native land, are forced in an ant-like manner to stray into Bavaria and Austria until they can return laden with their winter store, since the mere fattening of cattle cannot support a nation,—these respectable but footsore men, wending their way from Steiermark, were received ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... worried the doctor as to when I should go, and always received the non-committal reply, 'When you are fit to travel.' Saturday, however, found me on board of a hospital ship, and at 9 o'clock that night we arrived at Southampton. Ant-like, the stretcher-bearers went to and fro, from ship to train. For some reason or other they dumped me in a corner with my head nearest the scene of activities, so that I was unable to interest myself in watching the entraining of others. I feverishly ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams

... passenger. The largest cabin was turned out and adorned in his honour, and orders were given by which barrels of fruit and some cases of wine should be brought off to vary the plain food of an ocean-going trader. In the evening the Governor's baggage began to arrive—great iron-bound ant-proof trunks, and official tin packing-cases, with other strange-shaped packages, which suggested the cocked hat or the sword within. And then there came a note, with a heraldic device upon the big red seal, to say that Sir Charles ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the priests in the long-run. Scientific method is the white ant which will slowly but surely destroy their fortifications. And the importance of scientific method in modern practical life—always growing and increasing—is the guarantee for the gradual emancipation of the ignorant ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... deposed that Thomas Brouart, who resided in his house, having called the son of Collas Becquet a wizard, it happened that there was one day found in the said Thomas's bed a great number of maggots, which the said Sieur de Lisle saw, and compared to an ant-hill, so lively and thick were they, and they could hardly clear the said child of them, although they put it in different places; afterwards the said child gathered lice in such a manner that although its shirts and clothes were changed every day they could ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts

... caught an ant, never one of the fifth-story mosquitos that live and bite till Christmas, how greatly still my sky would need him! His flight is song enough. His cry and eery thunder are the very voice of the summer twilight to me. And as I watch him ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... bridge and I had to fot et to St. Catherin tho I went rite to worke at the willard house for 8 dolor month bargend for to stae all the wentor bot I havent eny clouse nor money please send my tronke if et has come. Derate et to St. Catharines to the willard house to John Dade and if et ant come plice rite for et soon as posable deract your letter to Rosenen Dade Washington send your deraction please tend to this rite a way for I haf made a good start I think that I can gate a longe en this plase. If my brother as well ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... bogs, and swamps of salt water, upon which, and by the sides of the lagoon, grows the true mangrove, such as is found in the West Indies, and the first of the kind that we had met with. In the branches of these mangroves there were many nests of a remarkable kind of ant, that was as green as grass: When the branches were disturbed they came out in great numbers, and punished the offender by a much sharper bite than ever we had felt from the same kind of animal before.[75] Upon these mangroves also we saw small green ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... ants, enormously big and warlike in appearance, come into bungalows, sometimes in unpleasantly large numbers, to see what they can pick up. They are not really aggressive, nor do they do any particular mischief. Another kind of ant, very like an ordinary English one though smaller, is a great trial to housekeepers. They get into the bread and sugar and other stores, and though cupboards are generally set in saucers of water ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... World-God, give me Wealth!" the Egyptian cried. His prayer was granted. High as heaven, behold Palace and Pyramid; the brimming tide Of lavish Nile washed all his land with gold. Armies of slaves toiled ant-wise at his feet, World-circling traffic roared through mart and street, His priests were gods, his spice-balmed kings enshrined, Set death at naught in rock-ribbed charnels deep. Seek Pharaoh's race to-day and ye shall find Rust and the moth, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... touching all its motive springs, while they convert all their friends into fellow-conspirators. Like all people possessed by one idea, these ladies press everything into the service of their great project, slowly elaborating their toils, much as the ant-lion excavates its funnel in the sand and lies in wait at the bottom for its victim. Suppose that no one strays, after all, into that carefully constructed labyrinth? Suppose that the ant-lion dies of hunger and thirst in her pit? Such ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... elsewhere were fed with similar liberality. Through these, letters, cards, packets, parcels, poured, rushed, leaped, roared into the great sorting-hall. Floods is a feeble word; a Highland spate is but a wishy-washy figure wherewith to represent the deluge. A bee-hive, an ant-hill, were weak comparisons. Nearly two thousand men energised— body, soul, and spirit—in that hall that Christmas-tide, and an aggregate of fifteen thousand eight hundred and seventy-nine hours' work was accomplished by them. They ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... movement had broken out in the piazza, resembling the stir of a troubled ant-hill, on either side of the broad green way down which the Pope would come; and already into the head of the street up which the priests looked figures were emerging. Simultaneously a crash of brazen music had filled the air. A movement of attention, exactly like the lift of ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... the river-banks the landscape is again quite different. The hills grow smaller and stand separate like great ant-hills. You have emerged from the country of ravines into the broad valley of the Bialka, and the bright sun shines full ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... Chemist's house, filled the open space across from it and overflowed down the steps leading to the beach. It was uncanny, standing there, to see these swarming little creatures, like ants whose hill had been desecrated by the foot of some stray passer-by. They were enraged, and with an ant's unreasoning, desperate courage they were ready to fight and to die, against an ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... divided into castes, with intermediate gradations (which I imagine are rare) interest me much. See "Origin" on the driver-ant, page 241 (please look ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... kam sa seen as I dit. Gin yu koud sen mi owr be ony o yur Innesness skeps, ony ting te mi, an it war as muckle clays as mak a quelt it wad, mey pi, gar mi meistir tink te mere o mi. It's tru I ket clays eneu fe him bat out ting fe yu wad luck weel an pony, an ant plese Got gin I life, I sal pey yu pack agen. Lofen fater, de man dat wryts dis letir for mi is van Shames Macheyne, hi lifes shust a myl fe mi, hi hes pin unko kyn te mi sin efer I kam te de quintrie. Hi wes porn en Petic an kom our a sarfant fe Klesgou an hes peen hes nane man ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... splendor of the dying day, and he felt more than proud to be their possessor. This pride awakened in him an absurd, impossible courage, as though he were a gigantic being from another planet, and all humanity merely an ant hill that he could grind under foot. Just let the enemy come! He could hold his own against the whole lot! . . . Then, when his common sense brought him out of his heroic delirium, he tried to calm himself with an equally illogical optimism. They would ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... your post-mortem method, try to build the philosophy up out of the single phrases, taking first one and then another and seeking to make them fit, and of course you fail. You crawl over the thing like a myopic ant over a building, tumbling into every microscopic crack or fissure, finding nothing but inconsistencies, and never suspecting that a centre exists. I hope that some of the philosophers in this audience may occasionally have had something different from this intellectualist ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... obliged to make a circuit in these channels while the wheel is turned in the opposite direction. In spite of having to move in a direction contrary to that of the wheel, the ants must necessarily complete their journeys in the opposite direction, and that ant which is nearest the centre must finish its circuit sooner, while the ant that is going round at the outer edge of the disc of the wheel must, on account of the size of its circuit, be much slower in completing its course, even though it is moving ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... you are, my dear," he said. "I'll be able to go around with you a little to-day, but after that, for about a week, I shall be quite busy with Mr. Martin. But Mrs. Martin and Nell and Billy will go around with you ant the children." ...
— Bobbsey Twins in Washington • Laura Lee Hope

... the temple of Isis, caused her image to be thrown into the Tiber, and crucified her priests."—Joseph. Ant. Jud. xviii. 4.] ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... When he sawe a waspe; A fly or a gnat He wolde flye at that; And prytely he wold pant When he saw an ant; Lord, how he wolde pry After the butterfly! Lord, how he wolde hop After the gressop, And whan I said Phypp, Phypp, Than he wolde lepe and skyp, And take ane by the lyp. Alas it will me slo That Phillyp is gone ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... heart. The moon began to be now eclipsed by twilight; a golden band surrounded the horizon, announcing the approach of day. Athos threw his cloak over the shoulders of Raoul, and led him back to the city, where burdens and porters were already in motion, like a vast ant-hill. At the extremity of the plateau, which Athos and Bragelonne were quitting, they saw a dark shadow moving uneasily backward and forward, as if in indecision or ashamed to be seen. It was Grimaud, who, in his anxiety, had tracked his master, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... batteilant*, A gilden towre, which shone exceedinglie; That he himselfe through foolish vanitie, Both for his rich attire and goodly forme, Was puffed up with passing surquedrie**, And shortly gan all other beasts to scorne, Till that a little Ant, a silly worme, Into his nosthrils creeping, so him pained, That, casting downe his towres, he did deforme Both borrowed pride, and native beautie stained. Let therefore nought that great is therein glorie, Sith so small thing ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... prince to the tree, which rose like a great pillar of smooth glass, so slippery that not even an ant could crawl upon ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher

... it is only one of the smallest ants. What would you say if you had to contend with the herculean wood borer? Your ferocious animal is only a modest fuliginosa, Madam Piccola; it is Formica fuliginosa, Latin words, which mean soot-colored ant." ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen

... American poet, was there. But the center of them all was Olympia Johns herself—spinster, thirty-four, as small and active and excitedly energetic as an ant trying to get around a match. She had much of the ant's brownness and slimness, too. Her pale hair was always falling from under her fillet of worn black velvet (with the dingy under side of the velvet showing curled up at the edges). A lock would tangle in front of her eyes, and she would ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... ANT. Who is he with the white-plumed helmet, who commands in the van of the army, moving lightly round on ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... hated For art, for music over-thrilled For every God For Fancy's gift For Genius made his cabin wide For joy and beauty planted it For Nature, true and like in every place For thought, and not praise For what need I of book or priest Forbore the ant-hill, shunned to tread Freedom all winged expands Friends to me are frozen wine From fall to spring, the russet acorn From high to higher forces From the stores of eldest matter From thy worth and weight the ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the most odious mutilations being resorted to. Occasionally the unfortunate creature was tied to a stake while pepper was rubbed into his eyes until the fearful irritation so produced caused blindness. Or, again, the victim was tied hand and foot upon an ant-hill, and left to the agonies of being consumed slowly by the minute aggressors. The most satisfactory death, perhaps, was that when the condemned man was allowed to be his own executioner. He was made much of for an hour or so before the final scene, and was well fed and ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... on the new world is the Europa ed America, by Dr. ANT. CACCIA, an Italian litterateur, who has apparently been in this country and describes it, as he professes to do, from nature. He says that he found the people of New-York ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... showman, at the conclusion of an epistle—penned under the very shadow of "moral wax statters"—to the Prince of Wales. And there was no evil in such a benevolent expression of feeling. George, the particular party referred to, occupies a prominent position in our national escutcheonry, ant the "Dragoon" is a unique creature always in his company, which it would be wrong to entirely forget. The name of the saint sounds essentially English, and it has been woven into the country's history. The nation is fond of its Georges. We had four kings—not ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... ire, sed vt commendatione etiam ipsorum ad confinia quoque daretur penetrare. Sumptus quidem non exiguus erat futurus, sed tanta erat principi cognoscendi auiditas, vt nullis pecunijs ad hoc iter necessarijs se diceret parsurum. O Dignum Regia Maiestate animum, O me foelicem, si Deus non ant & Kneuettum & Regem abstulisset, qum reuersus ab hac peregrinatione fuissem, &c. [Footnote: Ioannis Goropij Becari originum lib. 5 pag 494. Translation: "More than twenty years before I received from Henry Knevett, an English knight, in the name of King Henry, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... lui faire la guerre: Pour dissiper leur ligue il n'a qu' se montrer; Il parle, et dans la poudre il les fait tous rentrer. Au seul son de sa voix la mer fuit, le ciel tremble; 225 Il voit comme un nant tout l'univers ensemble; Et les faibles mortels, vains jouets du trpas, Sont tous devant ses yeux ...
— Esther • Jean Racine

... scattered about at short distances from each other. Having got to a secure distance from the last, two of our bearers put down their loads, and advancing towards it with the poles they carried, began to attack it with heavy blows, knocking off one of the small turrets on the side. Instantly a white ant was seen to appear through the opening thus made, apparently surveying the damage done. Immediately afterwards, hundreds of other ants came to the spot, each carrying a small lump of clay, with which they began to repair the damage; and even for the short time we remained, they ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... it. What right has the ant, in the dust, To cry that the world is all wrong, and unjust, Because the swift foot of a messenger trod Down the home, and the hopes, that ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... a start. He waded the river, following its course which ran counter to the canyon; he climbed the crags laboriously as an ant, gripping root and rock with his hands, clutching every stone in the trail with his ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela

... discouraged, but I made another effort. "Or," I said, "I can be a monkey and you can throw nuts at me, or" —desperately— "a ring-tailed lemur, or an orangoutang, or an ant-eater...." My voice tailed away and there was silence. Then the small voice of Phyllis ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various

... "I ca'ant rightly tall ye because I don't justly knaw, Abe. They said this here Mr. Lucy—Love-me Lucy they called him in the ward-room—got messin about a'ter Diamond's gal. But anyways there it were. Diamond struck ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... with awe or pity? Wisdom contemplating mankind leads but to the two results,—compassion or disdain. He who believes in other worlds can accustom himself to look on this as the naturalist on the revolutions of an ant-hill, or of a leaf. What is the Earth to Infinity,—what its duration to the Eternal? Oh, how much greater is the soul of one man than the vicissitudes of the whole globe! Child of heaven, and heir of immortality, how from some star hereafter wilt thou look back on the ant-hill ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... draw a breath, or drink a mouthful of water, without destroying some living thing. If we accept the teaching of the Scriptures, that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the knowledge of the Creator, then we must conclude that the life of the ant is of as much importance in His eyes as that of the ox or sheep. We repeat, we are not posing as advocates of indiscriminate and wanton slaughter, but on utilitarian grounds, we consider the use of the flesh of animals, as a ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... the band of the Mavericks playing the regiment to camp; for the men were route-marching with their baggage. The rippling column swung into the level—carts behind it divided left and right, ran about like an ant-hill, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... turned a corner. For the first time Watson was staggered by sheer immensity; for the first time he felt what it might be to see with the eyes of an insect. Had he been an ant looking up at the columns of Karnak, he would still have been out of proportion. It was immense, colossal, beyond man. It was of the omnipotent—the pillared portal of the Temple of ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... them," laughed Mr. Merrill. "When we get into the house I'll show you how those holes are made and then you'll understand why the ants didn't want help." So Doris came into the house too and Mr. Merrill got down a big book and showed the two girls pictures of ant houses and told them all about how ants make their homes and ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson

... now coming back. The faint popping of rifles was followed by another terrific crash. A second bomb had dropped clean upon one of the larger houses, and exploding on the flat roof had scattered the whole building as a man's foot might scatter an ant's nest. With a roar half the house toppled outwards into the street, blocking ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges

... and also Hell. Thus we find, that when Pwyl, or Reason, drives these dogs off their track, the owner comes up, and, reproving him, declares that he is a crowned king, lord of Annwn and Pendaran, i.e. chief of thunder. (See Myth. Ant. Druids, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various

... only information which reached Europe during the whole of the seventeenth century was due to the missionaries. Such names as Father Alexandre de Rhodes, Ant. d'Andrada, Avril, Benedict Goes, may not be passed over in silence. In their Annual Letters is to be found a quantity of information, which even in the present day retains a real interest, as concerning regions so long closed against Europeans. In Cochin China and Tonkin, Father Tachard devoted ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... very long, for they brought him a heap of pearls, and all he had to do was to thread them on the string. Just as he was about to make a knot he saw a lame ant coming slowly towards him, for one of her feet had been burned in the ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko

... to run away to sea. And yet he had done that very thing at the age of fifteen. It was enough, when you thought it over, to give you the idea of an immense, potent, and invisible hand thrust into the ant-heap of the earth, laying hold of shoulders, knocking heads together, and setting the unconscious faces of the multitude towards inconceivable goals ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad

... facts regarding the mole, spalax, ant-eater, and the lack of teeth in birds, the origin of shore birds, swimming birds and perching birds, ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... talking-machines growing out of the ground. Thousands upon thousands of those familiar cornucopias of bright lacquer with gilt edges pointed their open mouths up at him. And each one was the center of a swarming ant-hill of busy gunners ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko

... distance, across the vast level, something that looks hardly so large on the plain as an ant on the floor, is moving this way across it. This is what the cure and his friend are watching. Open in the cure's hand, as if he had just read it aloud again, is that last letter of Bonaventure's, sent ahead of him from New Orleans and ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... doublement inexact en avanc, ant que l'Aboudjed se compose de vingt-quatre lettres seulement, d'abord parce que les six mots qu'il enumere ne renferment que vingt-deux lettres, et en second lieu, parce qu'il oublie de citer les ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... was broken, and all during the picnic he seemed to have lost his cud. He leaned listlessly against a tree, pale as death, and fanned himself with a skimmer. When the party had spread the lunch on the ground and gathered around, sitting on the ant-hills, he sat down with them mechanically, but his appetite was gone, and when that is gone there is not enough of him left for ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... will and desyre is, that he will be kind to his Ante Beacham and his ant Rose Ken: by alowing the first about fiftie shilling a yeare in or for bacon and cheise (not more), and paying 4li. a yeare toward the bordin of her son's dyut to M'r. John Whitehead. for his ante Ken, I desyre him to be kinde to her according to her ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton

... most Dutch towns, and well merited the name of New Amsterdam, given it by its founders. The ground it covers was at one time divided into hill and dale; but with eyes wide open to business, and close sealed against taste, the conscript fathers of our infant Rome shaved smooth every ant-hill that rose in their path, and to their inheritors have bequeathed a love of their trim lines of beauty, for they are proceeding on the levelling system with a worthy pains-taking that will in due time render the whole island as ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... Hamadryads. Pomona. Vertumnus. Iphis. Cupid and Psyche. Zephyr. Temple of Ceres. Temple of Venus. The Ant. Golden Fleece. Pluto. Cerberus. Charon. The Treasure. Stygian Sleep. Cup of Ambrosia. Birth of Pleasure. Greek ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... first until within a very few days of its death on May 7, 1882. Tamerlane learned patience from a spider; perhaps Tanner was taught by them how to fast. The Hour, from which we take this item, also has the following: Another spider story is sent from California by the Rev. Dr. McCook, of honey-ant fame. He found a small cocoon of eggs and young spiders, which had no less than five other kinds of insects living in and about it. These intruders consisted of small red ants, a diminutive beetle, and ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... in the windows flung back the sun. A door opened and a midget in shirtsleeves came out, stretching arms, palpably yawning. Suddenly smoke jetted from a tumbled chimney, other puffs followed and steady vapors mounted. Ant-like men emerged from every house, gathered in little knots, busied themselves with the horses, hurried back to breakfasts. Faint sounds came ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... The man had conquered. The ant had overcome the mastodon; the pygmy had imprisoned ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... the humbling influence of love on the haughty harvest-mouse, we are touched by the sensibility of the tender-hearted ant, and may profit by the moral of 'the disobedient maggot.' The drawings are spirited and ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty

... Rands The Best Firm Walter G. Doty A Little Page's Song William Alexander Percy How the Little Kite Learned to Fly Unknown The Butterfly and the Bee William Lisle Bowles The Butterfly Adelaide O'Keefe Morning Jane Taylor Buttercups and Daisies Mary Howitt The Ant and the Cricket Unknown After Wings Sarah M. B. Piatt Deeds of Kindness Epes Sargent The Lion and the Mouse Jeffreys Taylor The Boy and the Wolf John Hookham Frere The Story of Augustus, Who Would Not Have Any Soup Heinrich Hoffman The Story of Little Suck-A-Thumb Heinrich Hoffman Written ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... labours for the conservation of his works. The fox burrows amongst ruins, bats and birds nestle in the cavities in walls, the snake and the lizard likewise make them their habitation. Insects act upon a smaller scale, but by their united energies sometimes produce great effect; the ant, by establishing her colony and forming her magazines, often saps the foundations of the strongest buildings, and the most insignificant creatures triumph, as it were, over the grandest works of man. Add to these sure and slow ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... accumulated, till it forms vast continents many thousands of feet above the level of the sea, all of solid ice. The weight of this mass will, it is believed, cause the world to topple over on its axis, so that the earth will be upset as an ant-heap overturned by a ploughshare. In that day the icebergs will come crunching against our proudest cities, razing them from off the face of the earth as though they were made of rotten blotting-paper. There is no respect now of Handel nor of Shakespeare; ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... she was a little bit of a thing; you could just see her. But Ant Black, she was a great big critter that went like a train of cars when she was ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... tell you of the torrid, Spanish Main, Where the tarpons leap and tumble in the silvery ocean plain, Where the wheeling condors circle; where the long-nosed ant-bears sniff At the food the Jackie "caches" in the ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... entered a court,... entirely surrounded by houses of several receding stories, which were attained by means of ladders loading from one to another.... From the top the pueblo reminds one of an immense ant-hill, from its similar form and dense population.... Going down from its outer side into the street, we encounter ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... the Miocene mammalian fauna of the Australian and Austro-Columbian provinces; but, seeing that not a trace of a Platyrrhine Ape, of a Procyonine Carnivore, of a characteristically South-American Rodent, of a Sloth, an Armadillo, or an Ant-eater has yet been found in Miocene deposits of Arctogaea, I cannot doubt that they already existed in the Miocene ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... veldt turned to mire, from mire to a pasty glue, and from glue to the consistency of cream. Bottom there was none; the bottomlessness of it only became more apparent when one or other of the horses stumbled into the hole of an ant-bear. Twice the gray broncho was on her knees; once The Nig came down so sharply that Kruger Bobs rolled forward out of his saddle, to land on his back, nose to nose with his astonished mount. Worst of all, the fever ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... went on, with great care, "that everything I've assumed is natural enough: the combination of an ant attack and the man's approach, occurring at the same time. Suppose we add a third factor: that the bees, even while fighting the ants, also started to attack the man; but that he chanced to turn his attention to the ants FIRST. So that the bees let ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... groaned, had drawn a charmed circle round about it. So near, yet kept at a distance; all-powerful, but in disgrace, the apparently devoted wife was lying in wait for death and opportunity; crouching like the ant-lion at the bottom of his spiral pit, ever on the watch for the prey that cannot escape, listening to the fall of ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac

... in the Mammoth cave,— Some species of the Ant, Have only a trace where eyes should be, Yet ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... totem in the hunting stage, but it is the one commonly found in India, where the settled agricultural stage has long been reached. The Bhaina tribe have among their totems the cobra, tiger, leopard, vulture, hawk, monkey, wild dog, quail, black ant, and so on. Members of a clan will not injure the animal after which it is named, and if they see the corpse of the animal or hear of its death they throw away an earthen cooking-pot, and bathe and shave themselves as for one of the family. At a wedding the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... animals have been for ages considered as patterns of industry: they were specially noticed by the wise king Solomon. He says, "go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise." The ant lays eggs in the manner of common flies; from these eggs are hatched small maggots, or worms without legs; these, after a short time, change ...
— The History of Insects • Unknown

... I beheld that very bird, a solitary female, flittering on over the flat ground before me, perching on the little green ant-mounds and flirting its tail and bobbing as if greatly excited at my presence in that lonely place. I wondered where its mate was, following it from place to place as it flew, determined now I had found a bird to keep it in sight. Presently a great blackness appeared low down in the cloudy sky, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... comically expressive phrase, and has many meanings. Fields was asking the price of a quarter-cask of sherry the other day. 'Wa'al Mussr Fields,' the merchant replies, 'that varies according to quality, as is but nay'tral. If yer wa'ant a sherry just to slop round with it, I can fix you some at a ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... half a bottle of champagne to pull us up to our usual spirits, as we sat at supper at a window where we could see London spread out beneath us like a huge black velvet flower, dotted with fiery embroideries, sudden flaring stamens, and rows of ant-like fireflies moving in slow zig-zag processions ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne

... we forded Viljoen's Drift; into the Transvaal—at last! We had a long march to catch Roberts, but this country provides one with heaps of things to break any monotony that might otherwise exist, for it is ever "'Ware wire," "'Ware hole," "'Ware rock," or "'Ware ant hill," and now and again in the thick, blinding cloud of reddish dust a man and horse go down, and another a-top of them. Soon after dark, nearly the whole of the veldt around us became illuminated, reminding me of a colossal Brock's Benefit or the Jubilee Fleet ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross

... life set out in well-marked fashion. We have a military clique headed by a personal and sadly irresponsible ruler; we have a vulgar and much swollen commercial class; and then, besides these two, we have a huge ant's nest of professors and students, a large population of intelligent and well-trained factory workers, and a vast residuum of peasants. Thus we have at least five distinct classes, but of these the last three have—till thirty or forty years ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... woorali vine; another was a root with a sharp, bitter taste. Besides these there were two bulbous plants, which contained a green and glutinous juice. He had also collected two species of ants: one large and black, with a sharp, venomous sting; the other a little red ant, which stings like the nettle. Having scraped the woorali vine and bitter root into thin shavings, he put them into a sieve made of leaves, which he held over a bowl, and poured water on them: a thick liquor came through, having the appearance of coffee. He then produced the ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston

... water; each of the boys being attended by the best swimmers; but when we came to the letter-boxes and valuables, we could suggest no means to take them over. Two camps were accordingly made, one on each side of the stream; the one on the bank which I had just left occupying an ant-hill of considerable height; while my party had to content itself with a flat, miry marsh. An embankment of soil, nearly a foot high, was thrown up in a circle thirty feet in diameter, in the centre of which my tent was pitched, and around ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... the challenge. He did so, in an evil hour. He was hotly pressed on all sides, two thousand of his men lay dead on Wakefield Green, and he himself was taken prisoner. They set him down in mock state on an ant-hill, and twisted grass about his head, and pretended to pay court to him on their knees, saying, 'O King, without a kingdom, and Prince without a people, we hope your gracious Majesty is very well and happy!' They did worse than this; they cut his head off, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... went to the bank of a river to quench its thirst, and being carried away by the rush of the stream, was on the point of drowning. A Dove sitting on a tree overhanging the water plucked a leaf and let it fall into the stream close to her. The Ant climbed onto it and floated in safety to the bank. Shortly afterwards a birdcatcher came and stood under the tree, and laid his lime-twigs for the Dove, which sat in the branches. The Ant, perceiving his design, stung him in the ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... Max knew that appearances are very deceptive when those who are out of their right minds are concerned. Often the very man who seems most harmless is the crafty one ready to commit a terrible deed; while he who looks to be a veritable terror may turn out to be a mild fellow, who would not harm an ant. ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie

... foibles of literary men. They have been translated into many languages; into English by Rockliffe (3rd edition, 1866). The fable in question describes how, at a picnic of the animals, a discussion arose as to which of them carried off the palm for superiority of talent. The praises of the ant, the dog, the bee, and the parrot were sung in turn; but at last the ostrich stood up and declared for the dromedary. Whereupon the dromedary stood up and declared for the ostrich. No one could discover the reason for this mutual compliment. Was it because ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer

... from the broad, white-marble plaza beyond the tall portico. Looking through the windows, He could see the enormous block of stone in the center of the plaza, and the tiny robot aircar hovering near it, and the tiny ant-shapes of the crowd on the opposite side. Beyond, the sky was ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight

... solitary communings with nature; it is a busy place where the struggle for life is keen and practical enough, and its inhabitants have little time or inclination to bestow on the pursuit of poetry. As in all the towns of the Terra di Lavoro, as this collection of human ant-hills on the eastern side of Naples is sometimes designated, the old command given to the first parents of mankind—"by the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread"—is scrupulously observed in Torre del Greco. ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... followed out, would make of every man and woman in primis [at first] a socialist; then a woman suffragist; then a philo-native, negrophil, and an advocate of the political rights of natives and negroes; and then, by logical compulsion ant anti-vivisectionist, who accounts it unjust to experiment on an animal; a vegetarian, who accounts it unjust to kill animals for food; and findly one who, like the Jains, accounts it unjust to take the ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... your opinion on his way of reconciling foreknowledge with freedom. LAURENT—I am fearful of giving offence to many people, if I confute this great man; yet I will give preference over this fear to the consideration I have for the entreaties of a friend, provided that you make me a promise. ANT.—What? LAUR.—It is, that when you have dined with me you do not ask me to give you supper, that is to say, I desire that you be content with the answer to the question you have put to me, and do ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... margin of the rock cut-way, noting "dead tops" ripe for the axe, pines where the squirrels had cached cone seed at the root, spruce logs gone to punk with alien seedlings coming up from the dead trunk, yellow ant-eaten wood-rot ripped open by some bear hunting the white eggs; noting, above all, the wonderful flame of the painter's brush, spikes with the tints of the rainbow, like Indian arrows dipped in blood, knee-deep, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... participation in the profits. This connection was thus kept private for two reasons, one of which, in the freedom of their inter course, was frankly avowed to Marmaduke, while the other continued profoundly hid in the bosom of his friend, The last was nothing more than pride. To the descend ant of a line of soldiers, commerce, even in that indirect manner, seemed a degrading pursuit; but an insuperable obstacle to the disclosure existed in the ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... they probably wouldn't want to—any more than you would step on an ant who asked you to help him move a twig. That's about how much ahead of us they probably are. Of course, we struck a pure mentality once, who came darn near dematerializing us entirely, but I'm betting that these ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... general stupidity and rascality, did some of the poor devils the honour to commend them. But light be the turf upon his breast who taught "Reverence thyself!" We looked down on the unpolished wretches, their impertinent wives, and clouterly brats, as the lordly bull does on the little dirty ant-hill, whose puny inhabitants he crushes in the carelessness of his ramble, or tosses in the air in the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... to me: There are two ants of human intelligence to whom we are trying to explain the nature of Space. One ant is blind, and one can see, and always has seen, its limited, tiny, Spatial world. Neither ant has ever been more than a few feet across a little patch of sand and leaves. I think we could explain the immensity ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... hastily scraped up a sand barricade, to protect the red ants, who, despite their valor, seemed to be getting the worst of it. Black ants scurried to the top of the barricade to be grappled by the tiny red ants, who fought valiantly. Pete saw a red ant meet one of the enemy who was twice his size, wrestle with him and finally best him. Evidently this particular black ant, though deceased, was of some importance, possibly an officer, for the little red ant seized him and bore him bodily to the rear where he in turn collapsed and was carried to ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... submit to being plundered in the first instance, if I have myself the means and spirit to protect my own property? But if an affront is offered to me, submission under which is to tarnish my character for ever with men of honour, ant for which the twelve judges of England, with the Chancellor to boot, can afford me no redress, by what rule of law or reason am I to be deterred from protecting what ought to be, and is, so infinitely dearer to every man of honour than his ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... river is quite bank-full, and the scattered native villages in the distance are in swamps. The innumerable high white ant-hills are ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... Lapdog The Fox and the Grapes The Lion and the Mouse The Horse, Hunter, and Stag The Swallow and the Other Birds The Peacock and Juno The Frogs Desiring a King The Fox and the Lion The Mountains in Labour The Lion and the Statue The Hares and the Frogs The Ant and the Grasshopper The Wolf and the Kid The Tree and the Reed The Woodman and the Serpent The Fox and the Cat The Bald Man and the Fly The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing The Fox and the Stork The Dog in the Manger The ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... intended. Of course, the houses for the larger birds must be protected in other ways. Charles Tesch of Milwaukee suggests a sticky fly paper compound made of resin (melted) and castor oil as a preventive for the inroads of the small red ant, if suitable support ...
— Bird Houses Boys Can Build • Albert F. Siepert

... air. The bare wooden buildings, with their long rows of windows and doors all of the same pattern; the smooth, beaten yards, all just alike; the swarms of children making it seem anything but Sunday-like with their noise; the teeming population, which made the tenements resemble ant-hills, and seemed to forbid any idea of privacy, looked very ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... in Trans. Third Int. Congress of Religions, II. p. 85. In the Ind. Ant. 1918, p. 145 Jayaswal tries to prove that Kalki is a historical personage and identical with King Yasodharman of Central India (about A.D. 500) and that the idea of his being a future saviour is late. This theory offers difficulties, for firstly there is no proof that the passages ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... minute Robin's eyes began to open wider, for he knew that he was looking at the feathered end of the arrow, pointing straight at him; and directly after, as he stepped a little on one side to avoid an ant-hill, he could see the whole of the arrow except the point, which had passed through ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn

... would be a shame, for it was nobody's fault but his! I shall tell him I'm like the Christian religion, for which people are always making apologies that it doesn't want! Two years! Patience! It will be very good for Robin, and four-and-twenty is quite soon enough to bite off one's wings, and found an ant-hill. As to being bullied into being kissed, pitied, pardoned, and trained by Honor, I'll never sink so low! ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... named Jesse once put a small caterpillar near an ants' nest, and watched. Soon an ant seized it; but the caterpillar was too heavy to be moved by one ant alone, so away he ran until he met another ant. They stopped for a few moments, during which each tapped the other's head with his feelers in a very lively manner. Then they both hurried off to the caterpillar, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... chapter without having the slightest idea of what materials the ensuing one is to be constructed. At times I feel so tired that I throw down the pen in despair; but t is soon taken up again, and, like a pigmy Ant, it seems to have imbibed fresh vigour ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... with Brahm[a] (brahma; these gifts, of course, are all to priests). He that gives respectfully and he that receives respectfully go to heaven; otherwise both go to hell. Let him, without giving pain to any creature, slowly pile up virtue, as does an ant its house, that he may have a companion in the next world. For after death neither father, nor mother, nor son, nor wife, nor relations are his companions; his virtue alone remains with him. The relations leave the dead body, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... amongst other beautiful varieties, remarked the daily rainbows of the lake Velinus. A scholar of great name has devoted a treatise to this district alone. See Ald. Manut., De Reatina Urb Agroque, ap. Sallengre, Nov. Thes. Ant. Rom., 1735, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... present—abundant game, water, the cover of the low brush in the dongas. Only lacked a few rocky kopje fastnesses to make it ideal; but that lack could be, and was, overlooked. The members of the safari often saw the great beasts sunning themselves atop ant hills; walking with dignity across the open country; sitting on their haunches to stare with great yellow eyes at these strangers passing by. Here they had never been annoyed or hunted; so here they had not become as strictly nocturnal as nearer settlement. In all their magnificence they stalked ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... (fig. 183), the molar teeth are furnished with small pointed eminences or "cusps;" and the animal was doubtless insectivorous. By Professor Owen, the highest living authority on the subject, Amphitherium is believed to be a small Marsupial, most nearly allied to the living Banded Ant-eater (Myrmecobius) of Australia (fig. 158). Amphilestes and Phascolotherium (fig. 184) are also believed by the same distinguished anatomist and palaeontologist to have been insect-eating Marsupials, and the latter is supposed to find ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... seeking for something—the man for a piece of timber to his work, the woman after cattle that ran wild now after mushroom growths: they would come home with many secrets in their mind. Did they tread unexpectedly upon an ant, crushing its hind part fast to the path, so the fore part could not free itself again? Or step too near a white grouse nest, putting up a fluttering hissing mother to dash against them? Even the big cow-mushrooms are not altogether meaningless; not a mere white emptiness in the eye. The big ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... suitable decision to carry out his purpose. After Pei Ming's departure, Pao-yue continued on pins on needles and on the tiptoe of expectation. Into such a pitch of excitement did he work himself, that he felt like an ant in a burning pan. With suppressed impatience, he waited and waited until sunset. At last then he perceived Pei Ming walk in, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... wonder," he said, "that so many people require so little to make them happy. Let but the sun break through the clouds, and he sets them all going like ants in an ant-hill!" ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... condition, as they are too low for the Law to looke on, and too meane for a King to interpone his authoritie, or bend his eye vpon: yet are they corruptions, as well as the greatest of them. So is an Ant an Animal, as well as an Elephant: so is a VVrenne Auis, as well as a Swanne, and so is a small dint of the Toothake, a disease as well as the fearefull Plague is. But for these base sorts of corruption in Common-wealthes, not onely the King, or any inferior Magistrate, but Quilibet ...
— A Counter-Blaste to Tobacco • King James I.

... An ant laden with a grain of corn, which he had acquired with infinite toil, was breasting a current of his fellows, each of whom, as is their etiquette, insisted upon stopping him, feeling him all over, and shaking ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... water several feet from the bank, and unfortunate bees that had fallen into the river struggled frantically to gain a footing on them. Water beetles shot over the surface in small shining parties, and schools of tiny minnows played along the banks. Once a black ant assassinated an enemy on Dannie's shoe, by creeping up behind ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter

... creep on Perfections. All my ten i sent Sentimentally. Timon is least Testimonials. A mild bear Admirable. Our big hens Neighbours. Peters cable Respectable. Grin o ant Ignorant. I cant tell soon Constellation. Saint lucy heals it Enthusiastically. A minor in soup Parsimonious. On a trial ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various

... in one fierce burst of passion against the invading Feringi, began to swarm like ants when the stone covering their ant-hill is kicked over. From end to end of the valley, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... first to the 24th the Green Drake and Stone Fly, the Owl fly, the Barn fly, the purple Hackle, the purple Gold Hackle, the flesh Fly, the little flesh Fly, the Peacock fly, the Ant fly, the brown Gnat, the little black Gnat, the Green-Grasshopper, the Dun Grasshopper, ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett

... with underground insects at work. You have seen a garden covered with ant hills. Here is a remedy, but one of which you ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

... broken ground for stalking. It was the perfection of uneven country: by clambering broken cliff, wading shoulder-deep through muddy gullies, sliding down the steep ravines, and winding through narrow bottoms of high grass and mimosas for about two hours, during which we disturbed many superb nellut (Ant. strepsiceros) and tetel (Ant. Bubalis), we at length arrived at the point of the high table land upon the verge of which I had first noticed the giraffes with the telescope. Almost immediately I distinguished the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... with love to toune With blosmen ant with briddes roune That al thys blisse bryngeth; Dayeseyes in this dales, Notes suete of nyghtegales Vch foul ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... their nest; for the nearest grown-up person was invariably hailed, and pulled, and pushed, and hurried along till the "new flower" was reached. Then, if the object was incautious enough to stoop down to examine it, the ants, ant-wise, would envelope it, climbing, swarming all over it, till there was nothing to ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... I guess. He points down the room to where me and Toledo was settin', and he hollers, 'Go to the ant, you slugger! Consider her game and get hep to it,' ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... ichneumon-fly lays its eggs under the skin of the caterpillar. The eggs are hatched by the warmth of the caterpillar's blood. They produce a brood of larvae which devour the caterpillar alive. A pretty child dances on the village green. Her feet crush creeping things: there is a busy ant or blazoned beetle, with its back broken, writhing in the dust, unseen. A germ flies from a stagnant pool, and the laughing child, its mother's darling, dies dreadfully of diphtheria. A tidal wave ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... that a man does see or hear? He is such a hive and swarm of parasites that it is doubtful whether his body is not more theirs than his, and whether he is anything but another kind of ant-heap after all. May not man himself become a sort of parasite upon the ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... many a girl through her disinclination to submit to proper chaperonage. The chaperon is much more of a social necessity in the East than she is in the South and West. If a girl proposes to "look ant for herself," there are some things she must carefully abstain from doing. She must not go to a restaurant with a young man alone; she must not travel about with him alone, even if she is engaged to him; she must not go "on excursions" ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... passage was discovered only a few years ago. Numerous passages of a similar nature are said to penetrate the volcanic rock on which the Capitol stands, in every direction, like the galleries of an ant's nest. Some of these have been exposed, and others walled up. They connect the Prison with the Cloaca, and doubtless furnished means by which the bodies of criminals who had been executed might be secretly disposed of. The passage in question ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... lightly, Mr. Meredith, of a calamity which destroys an ant-hill and half its inhabitants. Does the Power that runs the universe think us of more ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... was such a one. Et si delira fuerit ([2113]one observes) infantulum delirum faciet, if she be a fool or dolt, the child she nurseth will take after her, or otherwise be misaffected; which Franciscus Barbarus l. 2. c. ult. de re uxoria proves at full, and Ant. Guivarra, lib. 2. de Marco Aurelio: the child will surely participate. For bodily sickness there is no doubt to be made. Titus, Vespasian's son, was therefore sickly, because the nurse was so, Lampridius. And if we may believe physicians, many times children catch the pox ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... yet, ma!" he said, firmly. "It 'ud be with us like it was with the Hornbys; they didn't have nothin' to eat, and they went to the organization ant the man asted 'em if they had a bed or a table, an' when they said yes, he said, 'Well, why don't you sell 'em?' No, ma! As long as we've got coal I'll git the vittles some way!" He had to pause, for a ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan

... have a rather sorry task. But Captain Ant'ny would have it so. He wanted to feel that she would be among friends. He had the fullest confidence that you could manage wisely. There is a great box of papers, instructions, etc. You are appointed her guardian and trustee. I've brought boxes of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... finer flooring, they procured a quantity of the material of which the ant-hills are composed; which, being of a glutinous nature, makes a mortar almost as binding ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... is impatient of mysteries. The occurrence of an event out of the line of common causation, the advent of a person not plastic to the common moulds of society, causes a great commotion in this little ant-hill of ours. There is perplexity, bewilderment, a running hither and thither, until the foreign substance is assigned a place in the ranks; and if there be no rank to which it can be ascertained to belong, a new rank shall be created to receive it, rather than that it shall be left to roam ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... Miscellanies by Mrs. Anna Williams, the blind lady who had an asylum in his house. Of these, there are his 'Epitaph on Philips,'[72][*] 'Translation of a Latin Epitaph on Sir Thomas Hanmer,'[73][Dagger] 'Friendship, an Ode,'[74][*] and, 'The Ant,'[*] a paraphrase from the Proverbs, of which I have a copy in his own hand-writing; and, from internal evidence, I ascribe to him, 'To Miss ——, on her giving the Authour a gold and silk net-work Purse of her own weaving'[75]; [Dagger] ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... be a microscope, a real swell one, that we see what-do-you-call-'ems in water with, and stars, and ant-eggs, and all sorts of games, you know. Won't it be a jolly good present?" said Tommy, rather confusing microscopes and telescopes in ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... from the former, namely, from the superiority in kind;—for only by its co-existence with reason, free will, self-consciousness, the contra-distinguishing attributes of man, does the instinctive intelligence manifested in the ant, the dog, the elephant, &c. become human understanding. It is a truth with which Heraclitus, the senior, but yet contemporary, of AEschylus, appears, from the few genuine fragments of his writings that are yet extant, to have been deeply impressed,—that the mere understanding ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... last mentioned, remained to be ascertained. Parts of the surface in the scrub, which, before the rain, had been quite bare, now presented a crop of lichen, which bore some resemblance to the orchilla. It might have been gathered in any quantity. The ant-hills in this region, presented a different form from any to be seen in the south, consisting of slender cones of hard clay about the size and shape of sugar-loaves on an average, many being larger, or as much as 31/2 ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... of as great vitality in their line as the African people. The white ant was imported accidentally into St. Helena from the coast of Guinea, and has committed such ravages in the town of St. James, that numerous people have been ruined, and the governor calls out for aid against ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... A.V.C. corporal, and a khaki-painted motor-bus crowded with drafts for the Front. Big ocean liners, flying the Red Cross, lie at their moorings, and lofty electric cranes gyrate noiselessly over supply ships unloading their stores, while animated swarms of dockers in khaki pile up a great ant-heap of sacks in the sheds with a passionless concentration that seems like the workings of blind instinct. And here are warehouses whose potentialities of wealth are like Mr. Thrale's brewery—wheat, beef, fodder, and the four spices dear to the delicate palates of ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... evening, and how would the village stand this second storm of its broken defences? So the order was given to assemble in the street after dinner, and work at the repair of the breaches. The street looked like an ant-hill, as the workers, divided into gangs by houses, with the housemaster at the head of his gang, swarmed on the roadway, clearing it from the debris with pickaxe, spade, and a multitude of hands; re-stacking the cottagers' store of peat-sods, which the waves had sown broadcast; ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine

... On ant-hills screamed cranes with delight; In their rooms were our wives sighing sore. Our homes they had swept and made tight:— All at once we arrived at the door. The bitter gourds hanging are seen, From branches of chestnut-trees high. Three years of ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... talking, a carriage rattled up to the door of the hotel, and then another. There began, in a word, that hushed confusion—that running to and fro as of ants upon a disturbed ant-hill—which follows hard upon the footsteps of the grim messenger, who himself is content to come so quietly and unobtrusively. Roden arrived to make inquiries, and Mrs. Vansittart, and a messenger from more than one embassy. ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... creatures, were tested in the Zoological Gardens. A stuffed snake taken into the monkey-house caused several species to bristle. When Darwin showed the same to a peccary, the hair rose in a wonderful manner along its back. A cassowary erected its feathers at sight of an ant-eater. ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... a thousand years old, who knows? who cares? There is no history to the red race,—there is hardly an individual in it;—a few instincts on legs and holding a tomahawk—there is the Indian of all time. The story of one red ant is the story of all red ants. So, the poet, in trying to wing his way back through the life that has kindled, flitted, and faded along our watercourses and on our southern hillsides for unknown generations, finds nothing to breathe or fly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... words to tell you how, for there are none in any language that I ever knew to tell it; but where I am it is all ear and eye and the rest in one, and there is, oh, how much more besides! Things a homing-pigeon has known, and an ant, and a mole, and a water-beetle, and an earthworm, and a leaf, and a root, and a magnet—even a lump of chalk, and more. One can see and smell and touch and taste a sound, as well as hear it, and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... humanitate, & llam immanem, nihil tam interest quam JUS atque VIS. Horum utro uti nolimus, altero est utendum. Vim volumus extingui. Jus valeat necesse est, idi est, judicia, quibus omne jus continetur. Judicia displicent, ant nulla sunt. Vis dominetur necesse est. Haec vident omnes.' ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume



Words linked to "Ant" :   hymenopteron, driver ant, Formicidae, slave ant, ant shrike, sanguinary ant, bulldog ant, slave-making ant, legionary ant, ant bear, fire ant, slave-maker, ant thrush, pismire, ant lion, little black ant, family Formicidae, ant bird, army ant, ant cow, white ant, pharaoh's ant, hymenopteran, hymenopterous insect, wood ant, pharaoh ant, carpenter ant, Amazon ant, Formica rufa, hymenopter



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