When Men Should Marry

1895

It was clearly meant that all men as well as all women should marry, and those who, for whatever reason, miss this obvious destiny are, from nature's point of view, failures.

It is not a question of personal felicity (which in eight cases out of ten may be more than problematic), but of race responsibility. The unmarried man is a skulker, who, in order to secure his own ease, dooms some woman, who has a rightful claim upon him, to celibacy. And in so doing he defrauds himself of the opportunities for mental and moral development which only the normal experience can provide. He deliberately stunts the stature of his manhood, impoverishes his heart and brain and chokes up all the sweetest potentialities of his soul.

To himself he is apt to appear like the wise fox that detects the trap, though it be ever so cunningly baited; that refuses to surrender his liberty for the sake of an appetizing chicken or rabbit, which may, after all, be a decoy, stuffed with sawdust, while, as a matter of fact, his case is that of the cowardly servant in the parable, who, for fear of losing his talent, hid it in a napkin, and in the end was deemed unworthy of his stewardship. — North American Review.

Why Some Men Don't Get Insurance

1895

Men who make application for insurance in considerable amounts, say for upward of $10,000, are not only very carefully examined by physicians appointed by the insurance companies, but during the period while their application is being examined are kept under surveillance by a well organized detective service.

Some of the reports which are made of a man's habits and mode of life, with perhaps some of his pet secrets, as made to the detective bureaus of the different companies, would prove mighty interesting reading. Of course such matters can never become public property, and, in fact, the records are destroyed as soon as the application is passed upon. This fact, which is not generally known, may explain much to solid citizens who, for some unknown reason, have had their applications postponed indefinitely.

The insurance companies are entirely justified in employing such an instrument to learn the facts about their risk. Men who live rationally, like men who fill positions of trust honestly, have nothing to fear from being watched. — New York Press.

Just Like A Man

1895

And It Cost Him a Sealskin Cloak to Patch Up a Peace.

This is the sad story of two absentminded men. One of them told it last night with tears in his voice.

"Jennie Allen," he said, "was one of my wife's girlhood friends. Her father is a rich man who lives in central Illinois.

"When we came back to Chicago to live, my wife had not seen Miss Allen for three years. One day I went down to Mr. Allen's home to see him on business. After we had talked that over Mr. Allen asked me if I knew that his daughter was married. Naturally I was surprised.

" 'Jennie has been married more than a year,' he said, 'and she is living in Normal Park, just outside of Chicago, you know. Tell your wife to go out and call on her.'

"I told him my wife would be delighted and came on back to Chicago. When I got back home that night, I told my wife about it, and she smiled.

" 'So Jennie Allen is married, is she? She lives out at Normal Park, and I'm to go out and call on her, am I? Of course, you brainy man, you did not remember to get the present name of the Miss Allen who was?'

"Well, I hadn't thought of asking whom Miss Allen married, and I wrote to her father in a day or two, telling him that my wife found his direction rather indefinite and asking him for further particulars.

"His answer came by return mail. 'It is easy enough to find,' he wrote. 'Their house is only two blocks from the depot at Normal Park, and everybody who lives there can point it out. Do tell your wife to call as soon as she can, for Jennie is the mother of a little boy, and she is simply dying, she writes me, to see her old friend.'

"I took that letter home and handed it in triumph to my wife. 'I guess that will settle your difficulties,' I ventured to remark.

"She read it through in silence. Then a superior, pitying sort of smile gathered about her lips.

" 'Oh, Jennie's house is only two blocks from the depot, is it? Anybody can point it out to me, can they? All I've got to do is to go out there and ask the first man I meet, is it? Well, will you be kind enough to tell me whose house I am to ask for when I get off the train at Normal Park? Shall I ask for the house of the husband of Jennie Allen, or what shall I do?'

"I called a messenger boy and sent this telegram:

" 'James Allen, Woodville, Ills.: What is the full name and address of your daughter's husband?'

"One hour later the answer came. I finally succeeded in making peace in the family, but it took a sealskin cloak to do it." — Chicago Mail.

Experience Proves It

1916

We see in one of these New York papers that women have a "Hereditary Fear of Man," that this fear has come prowling down the ages from the time when woman was not safe from the predatory male, and so on. Yes, we can prove it.

Some twenty-odd years ago or more we came face to face with our teacher over a small difference of opinion concerning a matter of deportment. We looked her right in the eye as lion tamers do now in moving pictures, and we talked up as United States senators have always done. We remember very clearly the haste with which she grabbed into her desk for her ruler. That hereditary fear was working.

Over what followed we draw a veil — no doubt she did it in self-defense and the interests of culture. We are still sorry we scared her so badly and it is rather nice to know that it was really her fear of us that made us such a model pupil for the next week or two. You see they didn't have all the advantages of sociology back in 1880 odd, but we can all live and learn and read the papers. — Collier's.


Where He Had It

Little Fred — I've been awful sick.
Little Harry — What was the matter?
Little Fred — I had brain fever — right in my head, too — the worst place anyone could have it.

Daring Woman Hunts Jungle Beasts With Both Movie Camera and Rifle

(Click graphic for a much bigger view.)

1920

BY ELLEN MARIE BAYARD.

"I'll tell you a secret," said Lady MacKenzie to me in her charming, well modulated tones, with just the slightest trace of an English accent, as I was admitted to her superbly furnished apartments in a Broadway hotel at New York City, as the special representative of The Saturday Blade to interview her. "But you'll promise that you'll keep this a secret?"

I promised that I wouldn't tell a soul — excepting the readers of The Saturday Blade.

"It's this," Lady MacKenzie replied. "Just a few days ago I was visiting one of my friends in New York, telling her of a thrilling experience with a tiger in Africa. Just at the most dramatic point of the story, a mouse ran across the room in my direction, and — "

"And you, of course, ignored — " I hastened to interrupt, feeling certain that I was showing the keenness of my powers of anticipation.

Lady MacKenzie smiled at me, that charming, friendly smile of hers.

"Far from it! I picked up my skirts and mounted a chair, just as my hostess did, or any other woman would have done."

Is Wholly Feminine.

This incident, more than any other mentioned during the short interview, seemed to be most indicative of Lady MacKenzie's character. Here was a woman who could shoot a charging elephant in the fetid jungles of Africa without a tremor of an eyelash, but who mounted a chair to escape a mouse in a luxurious New York apartment. This Englishwoman had penetrated further into the dank wilds of Africa than any other living white woman, and as a nimrod had to her credit a long list of such harmless little pets as bull elephants, tigers, leopards and lions — to say nothing of snakes as large thru as the trunk of a tree. Yet she balked at a mouse!

The answer is easy. Lady MacKenzie is wholly feminine. Tho inured to the hardships of the jungles, she dresses in dainty laces while in civilization. In the undramatic environment of a New York hotel, it is hard to believe that this charming, attractive Englishwoman has earned the admiration of the world by her contempt for danger and hardship in tropical jungles.

But it is so. Lady MacKenzie has made two long trips into darkest Africa. She is off now on her third explorative tour and hopes this time to penetrate further and learn more than on either of her previous trips.

War Interrupted Last Tour.

Her exploration of the Tana River, one of the most treacherous streams in the world, winding thru 2,000 miles of dense thicket and papyrus swamp, was interrupted by the war. Her camp at the junction of the Tana and Theka Rivers was taken over by the British as a military base.

Lady MacKenzie's tours are not for purposes of sport. She photographs specimens of wild animals for the Smithsonian Institution and for the American Museum of Natural History.

And with all its hardship and danger, she finds big game hunting an attractive life. She loves adventure and "real life," the life in the open and the thrill of the hunt. And why not? Have men in these days a monopoly on those things? Not that Lady MacKenzie knows of! She likes the ponderous silence of the inky jungles, the sense of stealthy peril ever slinking near, the sharpened instinct of self-survival. She just wonders how people can settle down to a dull, quiet life while Africa is still on the map.

Lion Didn't Like Camera.

"Tell me how you photograph 'em," I pleaded.

"I took a second too long to take a lion's picture once, and he charged me," Lady MacKenzie answered.

Sounds easy, doesn't it? I know that it did to me, as I sat in a soft divan in the New York hotel. But how it really happened in Africa, as I found by questioning the modest English woman further, was this way:

Instead of setting her camera to take a picture by pulling a wire from a convenient retreat in the rear, Lady MacKenzie got right into the thick of things, with her moving picture camera out in front of her.

The lion, of course, didn't like it. Lions often don't.

"G-r-r-r-r! G-r-r!"

Lady MacKenzie kept on turning the crank of the machine as the lion stepped in front of the lens. The animal's tail began switching furiously. Lady MacKenzie coolly adjusted her camera to get a better view. Then the inevitable happened.

Barely Saves Own Life.

The lion leaped. His tawny body describing an angry arc in the air, he met the target directly. Lady MacKenzie's, leap for safety was too late, and the shaggy shoulder of the huge brute dashed her to the ground.

But that was his majesty's last second on earth — for Lady MacKenzie always had her rifle ready and knew how to use it. There was a muffled report and the king of beasts fell with a bullet thru his brain.

"That was a narrow escape," sighs Lady MacKenzie, in recollection of the moment, "but not nearly so exciting as to be caught in a stampede of wild beasts in the heart of the jungle."

It was this way, as I learned in the next few moments. The modern Diana came upon an immense herd of buffalo one day, and was intent upon obtaining an "action picture." To get the desired action she shot the leader of the herd with her rifle. The rest of the animals stampeded.

On they came, a mighty, bellowing avalanche of hoofs and horns. There were hundreds of them, bolting directly for Lady MacKenzie and her party.

Quick as a flash milady threw herself flat on the ground and waited. At any moment she expected to be trampled to death beneath the beating hoofs. With the thought came a fleeting picture of being buried by black savages in the wilds far from home and civilization.

Then the unexpected happened — an intervention of Providence, Lady MacKenzie calls it. For some unexplainable reason the herd parted just in front of where she lay and passed around her on the right and left, leaving her unharmed, but killing several of the native guides.

"But outside of the danger, is there much else of romance in the jungle life?" I asked.

"Too much — sometimes, I'm afraid," replied Lady MacKenzie, with a whimsical smile.

African Chieftain Proposes.

Then she told how an African chieftain became enamored of her when he saw her powder her face one morning. He was curious, and when Lady MacKenzie gave him some powder he applied it to his face, and then got her mirror to see if he had achieved the desired result.

By this time he had lost his heart to milady, and immediately proposed, tho he had several score of native wives. He offered to give members of the party ten sleek cows for the Englishwoman's hand in marriage. It required all kinds of tact and diplomacy to turn down the offer without incurring the anger of the chieftain and his powerful tribe of savages.

The Masals are the most interesting of African tribes, says the huntress, but are fast dying out. They are deliberately practicing race suicide to wipe out their own race rather than endure the encroachments of the hated white man. They are a race of polygamists and have no religion.

Africa Is Little Known.

"The world probably knows less about Africa than any other country in the world," says Lady MacKenzie. "And there is so much to know. I predict that Americans will before very long get into Africa in larger numbers. Then we may expect to find out all about it. For the American has a faculty for developing the commercial resources of a new country — of any country. And there are such wonderful resources in Africa — only the surface has been scratched."

But, altho Lady MacKenzie was too modest to say so, I might add that she had contributed a mighty share toward enlightening the world about Africa. She has brought home valuable records containing the native speech of unknown African tribes and thousands of feet of moving pictures on which are forever recorded the habits of the wild jungle animals and the life and customs of the jungle peoples. She has returned with tons of educational trophies. And she's not thru yet!

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 14.

Comment: This article and Lady MacKenzie are offensive at several levels. To me, the worst has to be when she wanted an "action picture" of the buffalo, so she shot the leader of the herd and made the rest stampede. Then she was in great danger, but, thanks to Providence, she was left unharmed, but the incident killed several of the native guides! That's terrible all the way through. And check out the photo essay, as they hunted animals with "a camera."

Passing of the Athletic Girl

1901

The athletic girl, it is predicted, is to be supplanted in popularity this summer by the girl of the olden type, who knew nothing of outdoor sports except a mild game of croquet be included in the list and, furthermore, did not care to know. It is hinted that the men have lost interest to some extent in the self possessed, independent young woman who can row a boat — and sail one too — play tennis, throw a ball straight, make century bicycle runs, tramp for hours without getting fatigued, swim long distances, etc., and that a reaction has set in in favor of the old fashioned type of girl, content to occupy her summer days with purely feminine tasks instead of imitating her sport loving brother.

Golf has not apparently come under the ban of alleged masculine displeasure to quite the same extent as other forms of sport, but the golf girl's skirt has been lengthened until it just escapes touching the ground, for fashion's experts declare that it is not correct to wear skirts that are overshort even on the links.

Whether or not these predictions prove true and the pendulum really does swing back to its former position remains to be seen. Meanwhile the shops are making a brave showing of golfing outfits and other sporting paraphernalia for women, and outfitting costumes have not altogether ceased to attract attention. — Dorothy Quincy in Brooklyn Citizen.

An Agnostic Marriage

1901

First Ceremony of Its Kind Performed in Cincinnati.

The much heralded marriage of agnostics, declared to be the first marriage of the kind to be celebrated, took place the other day in College hall, Young Men's Mercantile Library building, in Walnut street, when Frederick Federle, employed in a very modest capacity by the Pittsburg Coal company, and Miss Martha Seaman were married according to the pledges and rites prescribed by the new agnostic society of Cincinnati, of which Charles S. Sparks is the head.

At the conclusion of the agnostic Sunday school services the couple were made man and wife on the stage of the hall, which was decorated with the American colors and mottoes of the society, says the New York Times. Mr. Sparks acted as master of ceremonies. Mr. Federle and Miss Seaman repeated the pledges after Sparks, and acquiesced in them by spoken words and by nods. The voluminous pledges were in effect that they be frugal in habits, that the man at once insure his life for the benefit of the woman, that they avoid wrangling, and if they found in time they were not "mated" that they separate. The woman also repeated the words: "I will not bring children into the world not born of affection." Both promised to rear their children, should children be born, in the agnostic faith and after the teachings at the agnostic Sunday school.

Magistrate Alexander Roebling took the couple after they had taken the agnostic pledges and completed the ceremony, according to the civil law requirements as administered by magistrates. The magistrate, however, according to instructions from Mr. Sparks, did not use the word "obey" in his form of ceremony. After the magistrate Mr. Sparks again stepped to the front and in loud tones declared, "These who have thus bound themselves together in a marriage contract let no man or woman put asunder, or seek so to do under pain and penalties of dishonor and of the law."

The Dilatory Woman

1901

When women have an appointment to meet down town at a certain place, each lingers in her own apartment until the hour set for the meeting so that she won't have to wait an unconscionable time for the other at the rendezvous. Femininity is almost invariably late, even for business engagements, and any excuse it offers, however trivial, it thinks should be accepted as valid.

At catching trains and boats the dilatory sex is nevertheless unusually adept. It is said by those who are fond of gathering such statistics that one woman misses a train to about ten men. Madam, however oblivious she may be of time in other matters, if she is going away is sure to be at the station bright and early and with 20 minutes to spare. Whether this proves that the sex is selfish or merely that it is, in the language of the times, "long headed" is a question for consideration.

Hubby's Helping Hand

1920

We see no reason under the sun why a husband should not do chores around the family home, wash dishes, make beds, sweep, mop and dust. Nor do we see a good reason for a husband seeking to make a wife pay him for putting paint on the front steps or doing necessary repairing with nails. Our opinion, thus publicly expressed, says the New York Morning Telegram, is upheld by the learned jurist, Vice Chancellor Backes of New Jersey.

George W. Newberry has a home at Belmar, N. J., and lived there with his wife. He now is having law difficulties with Mrs. Newberry, which have nothing to do with what we are considering. In the course of the legal contests Mr. Newberry put in a bill for work done around the house and other chores. Newberry demanded $2,600 for doing these chores around the place.

This first-rate judge said: "If I were to allow your claim, any husband who washes dishes for his wife might ask $8 a week. This kind of work is a gift."

That is just what it is — a gift. The dishes that he washes are as much his as his wife's. The floor he sweeps and the beds he makes and the steps that he paints are his as well as his wife's.

We are pleased, we repeat, that the status of idle husbands has been fixed by Jersey law. It has been said that a "woman's work is never ended." It will be ended, and the woman can rest and enjoy life if the husband takes a hand in doing the housework.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 6. (Some errors were corrected to make sense of one passage. A random phrase, "an order, also, forbidding Mr. Newberry from interfering with his wife's property." was part of the article as well.)

Boats to Prevent Suicide

1906

For the saving of would-be suicides, the municipality of Rome has decided to employ police motor boats on the Tiber.


Decided Horse Committed Suicide

In a lawsuit at Aberdeen, Washington, over a horse whose death the owner attributed to a man who had hired it, the court decided the animal had committed suicide.


Suicide Statistics

Sundays from 9 to 12 at night is the favorite time for women to commit suicide. Taking all days into consideration, more men kill themselves than women in the proportion of seven to two.


"Anatomy of Melancholy"

Robert Burton published the "Anatomy of Melancholy" at 45. It was written to relieve the strain of mind bordering on insanity.

Ways of Picking Husbands

1916

Maidens Have Various Methods, Some of Which Would Seem to Border on the Ludicrous

To ninety-nine girls out of a hundred the most important duty in life is choosing a husband. Methods of choice vary a good deal, of course, chiefly perhaps as between town and country-bred maidens.

To the town or suburban girl a man's clothes count almost for everything. The bride is to the best dressed. The cut of a coat or the color of a cravat weighs more with Clara than character.

Her country cousin, on the other hand, knows better than to pin her faith to a tailor's dummy. She is guided in her choice by more than occult signs. By agitating with her hand the water in a bucket she can see the image of her future spouse. If she desires confirmation she has only to throw broken eggs over a friend's head and the same image will appear.

The peasant girls of Russia arrive at a similar result by seating themselves in front of a small looking glass in a semi-dark room, when a vision of their future lord and master will be certain to present itself.

Once a year an exceptional opportunity occurs. At twelve o'clock on Christmas eve every girl who can contrives to steal out in order to ask the first man she meets his name. Whatever he gives is that of the bridegroom-to-be.

Shrapnel (Pointed Humor)

1916

A doctor's pills may cure some ill — but not ill humor.

Courtship is a game in which a girl plays her heart against a man's diamond.

If women looked like the pictures in fashion magazines men would take to the woods.

It isn't necessary for a man to be a hypnotist in order to get his mind concentrated on the toothpick.

If time were money, the average man would have his watch geared to run forty-eight hours a day.

A young widow knows that the easiest way to catch a successor to the late lamented is to run away from him.

If the phoenix of common sense rises from the ashes of a fool's money the conflagration has not been in vain.

Possibly an honest man might be otherwise if an opportunity worth while were to knock at his front door.

Pointed Paragraphs

1916

Leap Year is twenty-seven percent gone, girls.

Old men frequently give advice to young men — and occasionally they give up money to confidence men.

No husband is always wrong and no wife is always right. Remember this, you married disputants.

When a man offers you something for nothing you will save money by going out of your way to avoid accepting it.

A Cheerful Soul

1902

"Hanks always looks on the bright side of everything. Do you know what he said when he lost his job the other day?"
"I haven't heard."
"He seemed to be quite cheerful over it. 'You see,' he explained, 'I applied for a raise of salary nearly six months ago and didn't get it. Think of how much more I would have had to lose if they'd given me the increase." — Chicago Record-Herald.


He Dropped the Subject

He was talking to the pessimistic, sharp-tongued damsel.
"Have you noticed," he asked, "that, as a general thing, bachelors are wealthier than married men?"
"I have," she replied.
"How do you account for it?" he inquired.
"The poor man marries and the rich one doesn't," she answered. "A man is much more disposed to divide nothing with a woman than he is to divide something." — Chicago Post.

The Hon. Doc Brown's Courtship

1902

The "Hon. Doc" Brown, of Morgansfield, Kentucky, who represents his district in the State Legislature, is one of Kentucky's unique characters. To illustrate a point in a recent speech, he gave the following account of his courtship:

"Take my advice and never give a woman anything she can't eat, and never make love to her out of an ink bottle. Why, when I courted my wife, I just grabbed hold of her and said, 'Sally, you are the sweetest thing on earth, and your beauty baffles the skill of man and subdues his ferocious nature,' and I got her." - New Orleans Times-Democrat.

A Use for Grasshoppers

Editorial observations, 1910

A Colorado farmer has gathered 125 bushels of grasshoppers, which he intends to dry, so that they may be used for chicken feed next winter. Since a use has been found for grasshoppers we may expect future crops of them to be failures.

A new comet has been discovered. There ought to be a stop put to this. If the former one brought about all the trouble which has been going on the earth since, we can spare any more of these heavenly mischief makers for some time to come. And those who are looking for trouble and read their answer in the stars should be legally enjoined, at least until the world has had time to catch its breath.

Look over your small change carefully; there are several counterfeit five-dollar bills in circulation.

Owing to the fact that their wives are away for the summer a good many men are almost forgetting how to button waists up the back.

Cincinnati surgeons are to amputate a citizen's six-inch nose. To use a Pittsburgh word, the gentleman really is "nobby."

No picnic can claim to have been destroyed by rainy weather this season.

Women as Fortune Builders

1917

I observe and you will notice that notwithstanding the great incursion of women of late years into one or another department of business they are not of much account as fortune builders.

Some of them earn or make a good deal of money, but they seldom get rich by their own exertions, and nearly all the rich women have inherited fortunes from men. Moreover, the women who are most successful as money makers are not, as a rule, the most successful as women.

The women seem to be a consecrated sex, too valuable to be employed in mere money getting. Vast numbers of them earn a living, sometimes a good one, and have to, but few of them get rich.

It is common for a young man to start out deliberately to accumulate a fortune. It is very uncommon for a young woman to do so. She is much more likely to accumulate a young man. — E. S. Martin in Atlantic.

Teach Your Children to Obey

1917

Our Boys and Girls

A fault, often laid to the mother, is the habit of unnecessary fault finding or nagging. One reason many mothers have so little influence with their children, is the habit of insisting on non-essentials. They make a fuss about trifles and lay down the law on points that are of no great consequence, like the kind of stockings or gloves they may wear, and then, when there is reason to protest against some really wrong course, they have used up all their force on unimportant details and their words carry no weight with the child.

You cannot begin too early, however, to teach your children to obey. If there is occasional rebellion it should be checked immediately, although I think if a child is taught obedience from earliest infancy, the idea of revolt will never present itself as possible.


Every Day Etiquette

"When sending a dinner invitation to a husband and wife, to which one is it addressed " inquired Fred.
"To the wife of course," said his sister.

There isn't a whole lot of difference between putting a man on, and tipping him off.

Joy For The Men at Tea

1917

Some Good Samaritan Has Invented Oval Saucer That Safely Holds Cup and Dainties

Any man who knows that, sooner or later, he must go to another afternoon tea cannot but rejoice at the recent invention of an oval, platterlike saucer large enough to hold with ease a cup, a lettuce or other sandwich, and a dainty trifle of pastry. The thing was needed, the modesty of the anonymous inventor — evidently not Mr. Edison — reveals him one of the large body of occasional and unwilling tea-goers.

We, the reluctant and unwilling, are all strangely alike at these functions and we have all been embarrassed by the old-fashioned saucer. Circular in shape, and hardly larger than the cup that belies its reputation and dances drunkenly whenever another guest joggles our elbow (which happens so often that we suspect conspiracy), the old-fashioned saucer affords no reasonably secure perch for a sandwich; responds with instant delight to the law of gravitation if left to itself; and sets us wishing, those of us who think scientifically, that evolution had refrained from doing away with an extension by which alone we could now hope to manage it. We mean a tail!

If afternoon teas had been started in the Oligocene epoch instead of the seventeenth century, we are convinced that evolution, far from discarding this useful appendage, would have perfected it. A little hand would have evolved at the end of it, such a little hand as might hold his saucer while a gentleman sips from his teacup. — Atlantic Magazine.

Will Women Abandon Love?

1910

Gertrude Atherton, the novelist, has been writing for Harper's Bazar on "The Woman in Love." In her first two papers Mrs. Atherton discusses those women in history whose love episodes have been the most striking thing about them. In her third paper, however, not yet published, she makes some predictions concerning the place that love will take in the future.

Mrs. Atherton does not go so far as Mrs. Belmont, who predicts that there will be a war between the sexes, due to the fact that men will not give women the suffrage. Mrs. Atherton believes and states, however, that from now on the love element will be a far less vital thing in women's lives than it has been heretofore. She thinks that the broadening out of feminine interests, the entrance of women into new fields, the intellectual development of women, are all factors which will fill women's lives to the comparative exclusion of that other factor which heretofore has been supposed to be "her whole existence."


The Busy Ant

Ants have six ears, which are located at about the queerest places imaginable — the legs. The ants are deaf to all sounds made by the vibration of the air, but detect the slightest possible vibrations of solid matter. This is supposed to be to their advantage. So sensitive are their feet that they can detect the drop of a small birdshot dropped on a table from a height of six inches and about 14 feet distant from an artificial nest placed at the other end of the table. The ant also has an elaborate array of noses.