of dollars to pump the water out,
and get the mine ready for working again. And the owners had first to
send for a professional ant-killer, and destroy the ant nest, before it
was safe to go on."

"A professional ant-killer?" repeated Harry, opening his eyes wide in
surprise.

"Yes: there are persons who make a regular business of destroying these
troublesome ants."

"Guess that can't be much trouble," said Willie, disdainfully. "Jes got
to put your foot on 'em, an' smash 'em."

"I hardly think your foot would cover forty square feet of ground,"
remarked his uncle, lifting up the diminutive foot, and very gravely
examining it. "And then there are the tunnels, running eighty or a
hundred feet away in all directions. I am afraid this foot would not be
quite large enough."

"I don't care," cried Willie, jerking his foot away. "I was thinkin'
'bout ants like what we have here."

"But how do they kill them, then?" asked Harry, looking up inquiringly
into his uncle's face.

"They build a sort of oven over the doorway of the nest," was the reply.
"In this they make a fire of charcoal and pungent herbs, and some
negroes are stationed with bellows, driving the smoke and fumes from the
fire down into the nest. When smoke is seen rising from the ground
anywhere, they know that a tunnel opens in that spot, and they stop it
up with clay. But it is no light task to kill out a nest of ants. The
negroes are kept constantly at work with their bellows for four days and
nights, driving down the smothering fumes. At the end of that time the
oven is taken away and the nest opened, every tunnel being laid bare. If
any ants are found to be alive, they are instantly killed, and all the
openings are stopped up with clay, which is stamped down hard, until the
whole nest is filled with it."

"Who would ever have thought that a nest of ants would be so hard to
kill?" remarked Harry, reflectively.

"All that trouble jes to kill some ole ants," said Willie, getting down
and walking away disdainfully. "Guess big men with their big boots could
smash 'em easier 'an that if they wanted to."

"Are there other ants that make such tunnels?" asked Harry.

"Oh yes; some of the ants are wonderful diggers. There is a Texan
species which on one occasion was found to have run a tunnel under a
creek, fifteen or twenty feet deep and thirty feet wide, for the purpose
of getting at the vegetables and fruits in a gentleman's garden on the
other side of