r his portrait. She then
saw above the arms and hands of the head, (thus she chose to call
the antennae,) two shining eyes, like two black buttons--naturalists
discover three with a microscope. "He has no trunk," said
Piccolissima, as she looked at a formidable mouth. At this moment,
the insect disengaged one of his legs, and twisting himself with
fury, and biting the finger which held him, he showed two jaws,
which worked like a pair of pincers. Piccolissima was not
sufficiently hardened to natural history. She shook her hand
violently, and uttered a cry that brought her brother to her in a
moment.

"Ha! ha! the great body," cried he, as he saw the trouble, and the
cause of it; "this is not a worthy enemy; 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."

"I should much prefer that they should be called at once by a name
that I could comprehend, 'little blackeys,' instead of these long
words, that it almost takes away your breath to pronounce."

"This is because you are ignorant, sister; but for that, you would
love the Latin names, because they are so fine sounding, and can
express so many things. For example, formica; can you guess? O,
no, you will never guess," added he, with a knowing tone. "Very
well! formica means crumb carriers, because the little cunning
beasts carry all sorts of knickknacks."

Piccolissima, who once had only frisked and frolicked around her
brother, and in whose eyes she had been hitherto a sort of amusing
plaything, listened to him now with an air of intelligence and
satisfaction, with which he was secretly flattered. "Besides the
herculean borer," he continued, "there is another ant in the
forests, much larger than your enemy, and who builds mountains. They
call him rusa, which means russet. It is he who produces the formic
acid, a poison which he sheds with his abdomen into the bite which
he makes with his mandibles or jaws, which makes the wound a little
red, and makes it itch and burn a little." He was going on to add
that mandibula signified jaw bone; abdomen, meant belly. He might,
perhaps, while he was in this mood, have declined all these nouns,
but his little sister had ceased to listen; she was following with
her eye a file of her small black ants, and she saw them go and come
very bu