Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been celebrated and the date of them recorded,though they say that Huber is the only modern author who appears to have witnessed them.“AEneas Sylvius,”say they,“after giving a very circumstantial account of one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small species on the trunk of a pear tree,”adds that“‘this action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth,in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis,an eminent lawyer,who related the whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity.’A similar engagement between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus,in which the small ones,being victorious,are said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers,but left those of their giant enemies a prey to the birds.This event happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden.”The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk,five years before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill.
Many a village Bose,fit only to course a mud-turtle in a victualling cellar,sported his heavy quarters in the woods,without the knowledge of his master,and ineffectually smelled at old fox burrows and woodchucks'holes;led perchance by some slight cur which nimbly threaded the wood,and might still inspire a natural terror in its denizens;-now far behind his guide,barking like a canine bull toward some small squirrel which had treed itself for scrutiny,then,cantering off,bending the bushes with his weight,imagining that he is on the track of some stray member of the jerbilla family.Once I was surprised to see a cat walking along the stony shore of the pond,for they rarely wander so far from home.The surprise was mutual.Nevertheless the most domestic cat,which has lain on a rug all her days,appears quite at home in the woods,and,by her sly and stealthy behavior,proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants.Once,when berrying,I met with a cat with young kittens in the woods,quite wild,and they all,like their mother had their backs up and were fiercely spitting at me.A few years before I lived in the woods there was what was called a “winged cat”in one of the farmhouses in Lincoln nearest the pond,Mr.Gilian Baker's.When I called to see her in June,1842,she was gone a-hunting in the woods,as was her wont (I am not sure whether it was a male or female,and so use the more common pronoun),but her mistress told me that she came into the neighborhood a little more than a year before,in April,and was finally taken into their house;that she was of a dark brownish-gray color,with a white spot on her throat,and white feet,and had a large bushy tail like a fox;that in the winter the fur grew thick and flatted out along her sides,forming strips ten or twelve inches long by two and a half wide,and under her chin like a muff,the upper side loose,the under matted like felt,and in the spring these appendages dropped off.They gave me a pair of her “wings,”which I keep still.There is no appearance of a membrane about them.Some thought it was part flying squirrel or some other wild animal,which is not impossible,for,according to naturalists,prolific hybrids have been produced by the union of the marten and domestic cat.This would have been the right kind of cat for me to keep,if I had kept any;for why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse?
In the fall the loon (Colymbus glacialis)came,as usual,to moult and bathe in the pond,making the woods ring with his wild laughter before I had risen.At rumor of his arrival all the Mill-dam sportsmen are on the alert,in gigs and on foot,two by two and three by three,with patent rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses.They come rustling through the woods like autumn leaves,at least ten men to one loon.Some station themselves on this side of the pond,some on that,for the poor bird cannot be omnipresent;if he dive here he must come up there.But now the kind October wind rises,rustling the leaves and rippling the surface of the water,so that no loon can be heard or seen,though his foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses,and make the woods resound with their discharges.The waves generously rise and dash angrily,taking sides with all water-fowl,and our sportsmen must beat a retreat to town and shop and unfinished jobs.But they were too often successful.When I went to get a pail of water early in the morning I frequently saw this stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods.If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat,in order to see how he would manuvre,he would dive and be completely lost,so that I did not discover him again,sometimes,till the latter part of the day.But I was more than a match for him on the surface.He commonly went off in a rain.
