Part 37

It is about the neuters we will talk now, for these busy, unselfish little creatures do all that has to be done; the whole work of the ant-city is left to them. It is they who collect the food--and very clever hunters they are, carrying their prey, whether alive or dead, right home to the nest; it is they who build the nests with their chambers and galleries, and bring up the little ones. Yet these earnest little workers have no wings, and must toil along upon their feet, while the ladies and gentlemen lead much easier lives, and fly about at will.

Still I do not think the workers are to be pitied, for they know their work, and do it in a very beautiful and unselfish way; and we must not forget that when the earth was in all the freshness of its beauty--no serpent's trail, no touch of fallen ruined man to mar its perfectness--"the Lord God took Adam, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it." As an old writer says--"What was man's storehouse was also man's workhouse; his pleasure with his task ... if happiness had consisted in doing nothing, man had not been employed."

A child, who has been set to watch beside the cradle of a baby brother or sister, and wants very badly to be off to play, may learn a lesson of patience from the way in which these little workers take care of the babies which are their special charge--for I suppose an ant's egg may be considered in its tiny way like a baby in its cradle.

These eggs are at first so small that you could scarcely see them, and they would probably never become living ants if not diligently tended; but under the care of their nurses they soon grow larger, and at the end of a fortnight the baby ants creep out, not bigger than grains of sand, but with head and wings complete. The first want of every living thing is food, so the nurses begin to feed their charge by placing the little open mouths to their own, and giving them the food which they have stored. Then I have watched them carrying them up and down, that they may enjoy the warmth of the cellars or the air and sunshine of the upper rooms, just as if they had a thermometer to tell them the exact amount of heat or cold that was needed. And I must not forget to tell you that part of the duty of the nurses is to keep their babies white and clean, and this they do not neglect, but wash them with their tongues, as pussy washes her kitten.

Even when their nurslings are full-grown, and begin to spin a silken cocoon round themselves, and it would seem as if, being no longer in need of food, they might be left to themselves, the untiring workers do not give up their charge. We may see them carrying little oval bodies carefully about: and these are the cocoons which they take to the top of the nest every morning, and back again at night. Most wonderful of all, they have an instinct which tells them when the perfect insect within the cocoon is ready to escape from its prison-house, and also that it is not strong enough to force its own way through. Working three or four together, very gently and patiently they open the silken covering, just where the insect's head lies, cutting the threads one by one until a hole is made, large enough for the young ant to crawl through.

When at last released from what has been its cradle and its prison, the tiny creature is still wrapped in a thin covering, which the kind nurses remove. They carefully stretch out the wings of the males and females, and pile the empty cocoons outside the nest ready for building; for waste and disorder are unknown in an ant-city.

Nursery days ended, the young insects are now shown "all over the house," conducted from one "winding stair" to another, taught to know friends from foes, fed and petted, until they take their airy flight beyond the reach of the wingless caretakers of their infant needs.

By-and-by you will read more about how the workers, by their busy toil,

"Raise such monstrous hills along the plain Larger than mountains,"

in proportion to their own small size; you will read also strange stories of how they collect the eggs of those little green insects which you may see in such numbers upon a rosebud, and tend them with great care--because these tiny aphides are their "cows," and they "milk" them by gently stroking them with their antennæ, and so obtain a kind of honey--also how the red and black ants occupy the positions of masters and slaves, the blacks doing all the hardest work, and being kept strictly indoors; and how it is not all work, even with the workers, for they have been caught at play, having high games of leap-frog and hide-and-seek!

Interesting as is the mode of life among our ants at home, not less so is that of those found in Southern Europe and in Syria, as well as in India. They are called "Harvesters," because they "prepare their meat in the summer" by gathering the seeds of grasses, and storing them in granaries against the winter. I have watched long trains of these ants going and returning with their loads, keeping their "own side" as carefully as if passengers in London streets. A naturalist who was watching such a train, once strewed a number of grey and white beads about, and waited to see what would happen. One unsuspicious ant seized a bead and trotted off with it to the nest; but not so a second time; the mistake was soon found out, and the (to them) worthless beads were left untouched by the wary workers, who before they stored the seeds in their granary, took off the chaff and left it in heaps outside, to be blown away by the wind.

It has been thought strange that the seeds thus collected do not sprout and grow, but for this moisture would be necessary, and the ants keep their grain as free from it as possible, spreading it out in the sun to dry, and storing it in granaries, underground like the nurseries, but quite distinct from them.

If you have ever disturbed one of their nests, you do not need to be told that ants, as well as bees and wasps, have stings, with a "poison apparatus" like that of a serpent.

How wonderful are these tiny creatures made by God, who has set them in their places in His creation, and given them their work to do, and the instinct which enables them so faithfully to play their part in the great world, that they are set as a pattern for us to imitate! How true it is that

"Each shell, each crawling insect holds a rank Important in the scale of Him who framed This scale of beings; holds a rank which, lost, Would break the chain, and leave a gap behind Which Nature's self would rue."

And what may we learn from the Harvester-ant, who "provideth her meat in the summer"?

I think I can hear you answer, "A lesson of prudence and foresight."

Surely this is so: "The ants are a people not strong but they prepare their meat in the summer"; on this account they have their place among the "four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise," and we do well to consider their ways and learn the lesson which they teach us.

Before we quite leave the ant-city, I should like to tell you that the eggs of ants grow while hatching, to accommodate themselves to the increasing size of the tiny creature within them. There are many interesting things to be observed about the eggs of insects; as to their colour, they are generally of that best adapted for concealment; as to the way in which they are hatched, I have heard that the mother insect--the Earwig was the one mentioned--sometimes sits upon her eggs, and that one of the spiders has been seen sitting upon the silken bag which contained its eggs, and carrying it away if disturbed.

I ought to have told you that there are two great divisions of the insect family--those which suck liquid food through their proboscis or trunk, such as flies and butterflies, and those--such as the beetles, bees, and locusts--which bite and eat solid food with their jaws. Dearly as I should like to tell you about bees, both "solitary" and "social," "masons" and "carpenters," we must not make this chapter longer, so we will speak only of the Locusts.

If I could let you have a peep into the box where I keep a specimen-locust, which came to me by post from his native country, you would notice his powerful jaws, which are so strong that they inflict a severe wound; but it is not on account of their bite that locusts have been used by God as His "exceeding great army" to punish those who hardened themselves against Him; but because wherever they alight in their countless myriads, they devour every green thing, turning a fruitful field into a barren desert in a few hours.

Did you ever see as well as hear a grasshopper? The locust is an insect of the same kind, and I have heard that African locusts in the first stage of their life are as green as grasshoppers, but wingless--though they afterwards have very pretty wings. They are described as crowding together, "standing upon each other in heaps four or five deep, or gradually advancing over each other's backs, eating all before them."

A flight of locusts is indeed a wonderful sight. An African traveller once saw advancing towards him a dark cloud; the seeming storm came nearer and nearer; ah! it was no snow-storm or hail-storm, but a living cloud of locusts. He thus describes it, as it came upon him and his companions:

"Each flake of snow was a locust; we stood with our backs to them, and they struck us over the face and ears; we had to protect our eyes with our hands; the ground where the flight had settled was soon bare, and the trees leafless." Can you wonder that such a storm-cloud should be dreaded beyond any other, and that when the Egyptian sky was darkened by it--and "before them there were no such locusts as they"--Pharaoh besought that God might be entreated to take away this "death" from him and from his land? And they were not the only creatures used by God at that time to punish the proud and wilful king who refused to let His people go that they might serve Him.

But we must now end this long chapter, remembering that we have spoken of only a few of the living creatures which belong to the vast family of animals which have no body framework or skeleton; you can read in larger books the wonderful things which are told about jelly-fishes and sponges, bees and wasps, flies and gnats, and green tiger-beetles--for when we have made a beginning in these little talks of ours together about God's creatures, it will be pleasant to go on; so pleasant for some of us that, having once begun, the difficult thing will be to know where to leave off.

I wish I could show you some pictures which I have seen of fossil insects. I believe white ants and dragon-flies, and even a butterfly, have been found among the rocky strata, but those of which I speak were preserved in amber, which is a clear yellow substance, long thought to be a mineral, but now recognised as the hardened resin of ancient pine-trees. In this transparent sepulchre bees and wasps, gnats, spiders, and beetles have been buried, some uninjured, and others with broken legs or wings. They must have got into the sticky gum while it was moist, and been unable to escape--and so have lain for ages in their transparent tomb.

I wonder whether these verses, which came to my mind while we were speaking of the lessons we should learn from those creatures which faithfully use the wisdom given them, are new to you.

"Never man spake like this man."