BRITISH ANTS. By H. St. J. K. Donisthorpe. (Rout- edge.
25s.)- -The study of ants has made such great progress luring the last ten years, and so many important books and moms on the subject have been published, that we may be xcused for giving this brief notice to a second edition of Mr. bnistborpe s delightful and learned book. Ants are the most ominant Of all insects ; indeed, they outnumber in individuals II other terrestrial animals. In space they range from trctic to Antartic, and in time from the Tertiary period o an unknown to-morrow. Ants are evidently influenced
w education, experience and memory, even as we : they an and build, they coerce slaves, fight battles, experience oyalty, anger and excitement, and have developed in some egree a language, a sense of orientation and a family life. Here re worlds altogether outside our normal processes of thought, if a fusca biting off the head of rttribarbis female, of an pileptic ant, of a young queen trepidant at the threshold of er new colony, of ant-mimicking spiders, and a thousand ether tiny yet tremendous oddities (in our limited view)
n the strange scheme of creation. Perhaps a particular ype of mind is required to enjoy a book of this sort, but o this reviewer, at any rate, who is not a myrmecologist y vocation or training, it proved extremely fascinating.
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