Ants have not been forgotten. They swarm every-
voL. n. 2 B

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370 ENGLISH FEMALE ABTI8T8.
where, chiefly a giant kind — black, with red middles.
But they don't seem to do any harvesting — though
once or twice I have seen them carrying dry husks
of seeds. In an old felled tree, I found galleries
filled with that sawdust sort of paste the cremcUo-
gastor made in the fir trees at Mentone. But
there is always * no time ' for any real research, and
I feel demoralized and useless : never doing anything,
and talking a great deal more than is good for one.
" These islands are so beautiful, especially Isola
Madre, with their great black cypress trees, and
groves of magnolia and camellias all over flowers, and
peacocks carrying their long trains in their stately
manner along the sunny lawns, or perched in calm
splendour upon old stone balustrades. And then the
whole air is full of sweet southern odours, and the
' never-ending song ' of ring-doves ; and ripe lemons
hang in pale gold against the hot walls, with crimson
roses wreathed about — and there is a feeling of
eternal summer.
" It seems to me wonderful, how full of delight
this common world is I "



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LADY BUCKETT. 371



^H}i §utUii.
T SABELLA, Lady Duckctt, comes of a distinguished
and intellectual line on both sides of her family.
Her grandmother was the celebrated novelist, Charlotte
Smith; and her father, the late Lieutenant-General
Sir Lionel Smith, Bart, G.C.B. and G.C.H., as Gover-
nor of Jamaica, carried out the emancipation of the
negroes, and was otherwise eminent from his services
in the East Indies, in the Deccan, and elsewhere.
