To them, enter the two small brown ants, their lawful
possessors; for ants, too, though absolutely unrecognised by English law
('de minimis non curat lex,' says the legal aphorism), are nevertheless
in their own commonwealth duly seised of many and various goods and
chattels; and these same aphides, as everybody has heard, stand to them
in pretty much the same position as cows stand to human herdsmen. Throw
in for sole spectator a loitering naturalist, and you get the entire
_mise-en-scene_ of a quaint little drama that works itself out a dozen
times among the wilted rose-trees beneath the latticed cottage windows
every summer morning.
It is a delightful sight to watch the two little lilliputian proprietors
approaching and milking these their wee green motionless cattle. First
of all, the ants quickly scent their way with protruded antennae (for
they are as good as blind, poor things!) up the prickly stem of the
rose-bush, guided, no doubt, by the faint perfume exhaled from the
nectar above them. Smelling their road cautiously to the ends of the
branches, they soon reach their own particular aphides, whose bodies
they proceed gently to stroke with their outstretched feelers, and then
stand by quietly for a moment in happy anticipation of the coming
dinner. Presently, the obedient aphis, conscious of its lawful master's
friendly presence, begins slowly to emit from two long horn-like tubes
near the centre of its back a couple of limpid drops of a sticky pale
yellow fluid.
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