Several other ants passed, each carrying the slender needles which fall
from firs, and which seemed nothing in their powerful grasp. These
burdens of wood all went in one direction, to the right of the path.

I took a step there, but stayed to watch two more ants, who had got a
long scarlet fly between them, one holding it by the head and the other
by the tail. They were hurrying their prey over the dead leaves and
decayed sticks which strewed the ground, and dragging it mercilessly
through moss and grass. I put the tip of my stick on the victim, but
instead of abandoning it they tugged and pulled desperately, as if they
would have torn it to pieces rather than have yielded. So soon as I
released it away they went through the fragments of branches, rushing
the quicker for the delay.

A little farther there was a spot where the ground for a yard or two was
covered with small dead brown leaves, last year's, apparently of birch,
for some young birch saplings grew close by. One of these leaves
suddenly rose up and began to move of itself, as it seemed; an ant had
seized it, and holding it by the edge travelled on, so that as the
insect was partly hidden under it, the leaf appeared to move alone, now
over sticks and now under them. It reminded me of the sight which seemed
so wonderful to the early navigators when they came to a country where,
as they first thought, the leaves were alive and walked about.

The ant with the leaf went towards a large heap of rubbish under the
sapling birches. While watching the innumerable multitude of these
insects, whose road here crossed these dead dry leaves, I became
conscious of a rustling sound, which at first I attributed to the wind,
but seeing that the fern was still, and that the green leaves of a