Solomon's little people; a story about the ants

Front matter

Nest of hie Common Wood Ant (Formica rufa). The Nurseries, gl jTttnmj cilrcrut iijn JUnts,

BY

JAMES CROWTHER.

Preface

OME of my readers will recognize in the title as well as the matter of this little hook, a lecture which I have given in various parts of London and the country during past years. Like its predecessor, “ The Five-Barred Gate,” it was written at the suggestion of a dear friend, that the story might be preserved when it became necessary that the lectures should be given up; and, with the desire to do the greatest amount of good in the shortest of space, I have endeavoured to make the book attractive for the general reader, amusing and instructive for the young, and useful and suggestive for the Lecture Committee of the Sunday School Union, to whom, in token of my admiration of the excellent manner in which they manage the important work they have undertaken, I have presented the re-written manuscripts of my lectures, and, when complete, the diagrams with which they have been illustrated. And should these volumes only prove to he as acceptable and as useful as I have good reason to know the former have proved to be during upwards of a quarter of a century, I shall have a twofold reason for thankfulness, that the delight I have so long experienced in testifying to the wonderful works of God has been used to His glory and the good of my fellow-men.

Interspersed with numerous anecdotes disconnected immediately with the subject, and sometimes suffering from repetition, this story of comparisons aims chiefly at illustrating, confirming, repeating, and establishing in the

PREFACE.

reader’s mind, some virtuous principle, never forgetting life’s chief lesson, the preparation for a future state ; and if sometimes the pen is dipped in hitter ink in reference to materialism — the fashionable speculation, alas ! of too many scientific men of the day — it is from conviction that this pernicious doctrine is in direct opposition to the Word of God, insinuating its deadly venom into the minds of teachers otherwise trustworthy, under the primeval form of “Yea ! hath God said ? ”

Since the book was written the great leader of the revived theory of the origin of species has gone to his account ; but his disciples remain, some of whom have out-Darwin’d Darwin: the doctrine of one as to the origin of matter, both in the world we live on as well as the house we live in, body and soul, is, to my mind, such rank atheism, that I consider it a matter of duty to warn my readers to what it may, and must, ultimately lead. “ Darwinism,” writes one, in a first-rate serial, “ leaves no room for what is dearest to the Christian’s heart. Natural selection denies the fall, leaves no room for Providence, prayer, or redemption ; and were it true, the Bible would no longer be a God-given revelation. But Darwinism not only robs us of revelation, but removes the very foundation from under the whole structure of natural religion : Darwinism, in deriving man from the brute rather than a fallen spirit, at one blow robs morality of its sanction ” (j Scribner’s Magazine).

No one will accuse the French newspapers of being overreligious, whatever may be said of my anti-Darwinism; but one of them, the Patrie , referring to his recent decease, concluded its article in these words :

“ While rendering justice to the enormous knowledge of the illustrious naturalist, and to his prodigious power of work, it is impossible to acquit him of an abuse of liis theories by rearing upon them the desolating system of natural philosophy, at which his disci pies, under the authority of his great name, are still at work, with the view of dethroning religion and setting it up in its place.

These words exactly re-echo my views, and I recommend them to my readers. J. C.

CO-OPERATION

CHAPTER IY.

. . .

CHAPTER Y.

CHAPTER YI.

CHAPTER VII.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XT.

CHAPTER XII.

SOLOMON’S LITTLE PEOPLE.

Chapter I. Busybodies

“ In these beings so minute, and as it were such nonentities, what wisdom is displayed, what power, what unfathomable perfection.” — Pliny, a.d. 50.

IjNDER this title I purpose describing something of the natural history of the Ant, an insect which has attracted the attention of the curious ever since the wise king of Israel directed every sluggard to go to it for wisdom. It was Solomon who said, “ There is no new thing under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new ? it hath been already of old time, which was before Us.” And you will say this of my story, and perhaps remind me of another saying of the same wise man, “Be admonished: of making many books there is no end ; and much study is a weariness to the flesh.”

Solomon is true ; his wisdom is proverbial ; but he lived nearly three thousand years ago, and since fiis time what

Solomon’s little people.

strange discoveries liave been made, and liow many of these are owing to what is to be found in Nature’s great picture-book !

Like a kaleidoscope, you may turn its wonderful pages over and over again, and every time get a different view of the same thing* Every lover of the true and beautiful sees something which others have overlooked ; and so it is that I gather up, and then scatter, not only the wisdom of others not generally known, but illustrate it by my own experience.

Let me make clear my meaning. You will find among the Proverbs these words, “ There be four things which are little upon the earth, hut they are exceeding wise : the ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer.” These words, truly, are not Solomon’s own, but his friend’s ; hut can you doubt that, placed as they are amongst Solomon’s proverbs, they were considered as borrowed by Agur from the king ?

“ The ants are a jieople:” it is a remarkable expression ; a “little people” — not a strong people, but a wise people. I made this remark before a number of entomologists at a scientific meeting not long ago, calling attention to the resemblance of the wisdom of the ant to the wisdom of the man ; when one who had made the study of insects the great work of his life declared frankly tbat he had never thought of that before — how exactly the ants, of all animals, deserved the name of “ a jieople.”

Have you not sometimes wondered why Solomon directed) attention to the ant in preference to the bee , as a model of that which is wise ? "Wisdom, you know, was what he asked for, coveting that beyond gold and silver, as being the most precious then as it has ever been. He knew how to appreciate wisdom wherever it should be found. Thereis no doubt that he must often have observed the beeshumming their merry hymns in his garden on the sunny slopes of Mount Zion, because he often speaks of honey

BUSYBODIES.

and the honeycomb j then how is it that out of the four things referred to as teachers of wisdom, although three out of the four are insects, the ant is preferred to the bee ?

I think I have discovered the reason. Amongst the thousand and one things I can remember of the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1862, is one which produced so strong an impression on my mind, that while I can remember anything I am sure I shall remember that. Standing on a good-sized table, and measuring about six feet in length by about half the width, was a beautiful model of Lincoln Cathedral. My thoughts of this model and the lesson it taught me were something like those of one who wrote a description of the grand old building itself, who said, “The first view of Lincoln Cathedral obtained by the approaching traveller is something to remember for a lifetime.”

And the story of the Norman founder, who came over with William the Conqueror, is not altogether unlike the story of the modeler ; of both, the historian’s description of the architect holds good, “ His mind exerted itself to excel and shine,” for not only was Remigius the founder, but the builder, it being reported of him that he actually carried the stones and mortar upon his own shoulders.

This is not the place to describe the glories of the beautiful pile, with its towers and turrets, its gables and capitals, but there, in the Exhibition building, stood its model, made to scale, with all the external parts beautifully carved in — what do you think? — cork! “ And,” you will say, “ pray, who was the sculptor ? ”

Standing by the model was a working man, his coat off, his apron on ; upon the table lay the worn-out remains of two old knives, and a stone very much the worse for wear, upon which they had been sharpened. He was an agricultural labourer ; and this poor working man had employed all the spare hours, after working during the day in the

Solomon’s, little people.

field. First, going from house to house and asking civilly if they would save him all the old corks drawn from their bottles ; — and how many of those corks do you think he collected during the spare hours of ten years ? One million , eight hundred; — and then with these and his two knives, and without any assistance or drawings, with nothing but mere brain, he sculptured this beautiful model of the grand cathedral at Lincoln. Don’t you think he was well repaid by being allowed to receive any subscription which visitors might choose to drop into his box to reward his perseverance, and may we not say exactly the same of him as was said of the founder of the building eight hundred years ago, “ His mind exerted itself to excel and shine ” ?

“ Well,” you will say, “ but what has all this to do with the discovery of Solomon’s saying about the wisdom of the ant being superior to that of the bee ? ” Much.

Don’t you think of the two builders the agricultural labourer was the wiser ? Without plans, or education, or implements, he carried out his model. What sketches, what tools, what material, what assistance the Norman architect employed !

Now we must compare the tools, first of the bee, then of the ant, and in order to do this effectually we must take down our miscroscope and examine these curious instruments with our own eyes.

First, the Bee. Of course you know what this wonderful little insect has to do : from the nectar, and pollen, and propolis of flowers and buds, it has to make pap for the baby-bees ; bread of a peculiar kind for the royal family ; ordinary bread for the workers ; wax for the houses ; varnish for the walls ; poison for its enemies, besides other things, the raw material for which, collected from the flowers, is carefully transported in the pockets in its hind-legs.

But what is that complicated instrument we are looking

BUSYBODIES.

at through the magic tube of our instrument ? The tongue.

You will easily understand that of all tools necessary for the curious work the honey bee has to perform, trowels and scissors would be the most appropriate. “ Why ? ”

Hind-legs of Bees, showing the opening of Bread-pockets.

Because it needs the first to spread the wax, as a plasterer uses a trowel to plaster a wall, and the second with which to divide the sheets of wax when the geometrical divisions are fixed, in order to fit into the most wonderful building in the world, the hexagonal cell with its six different sides.

Solomon’s little people.

d

Head and Tongue ofathe Common Honey Bee, drawn from nature : a, compound antennae ; b, mandibles, or larger jaws ; c, lesser jaws, showing a combination of trowels and scissors ; d , the brush with which pollen is collected ; e, the 3,500 compound eyes ; /, three simple eyes, supposed for shorter or nearer sight, as the former are for longer, or distant objects.

BUSYBODIES.

Then, again, the pollen from which much of its food is made, and with which the great business of its active life is occupied, namely the multiplication of variety and beauty in the world of flowers, needs a fairy-like brush with which it shall be delicately swept from the stamens on which it is so delicately suspended, like gold-dust ; well, there they are, all combined in one complicated instrument.

This is the tongue of the honey bee, three instruments in one , and one in three. A trinity in Nature, you see ; an illustration in the natural world of the saying of the apostle, •“ The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made ; ” and also to that other saying of one of poor Job’s comforters, “ The secrets of wisdom are double to that which is.”

Thus we learn that natural facts are symbolic of spiritual truths ; that the scenes of Nature are the pictures by which spiritual truth is taught in the grander revelation ; and that, therefore, the best of all merely human “ helps to reading the Bible ” is the miscroscope, because it describes spiritual truths in sensible pictures.

But what evidence have we here, in passing, of design in this wonderful tongue of our friend !

And now let us change the picture. The object I now place on the stage of our instrument is the tongue of the common wood ant.

“ How unlike the bee's tongue /” Indeed it is. There is nothing in comparison.

First, how extremely small. We had to change our magnifying glass twice, you observed, before we could see it effectively. A power of four hundred times was sufficient to discover most of the wonders of the bee’s tongue, but now we find one of thirty-eight thousand insufficient. The entire tongue, you see, is scarcely visible to the eye without the glass. Stretched out almost in the shape of a a lady’s fan when opened, it is covered with an innumer-

Solomon's little people.

able number of teeth, and the edge shows them curved and bent over the sides, exactly like the rasping teeth in a carpenter’s file.

“ How many of the teeth are there ? ”

I cannot tell, nor count them. The ant is not the only a a

Head of Common Wood Ant : a, antennas ; b , tongue ; c, greater mandibles or jaws ; d, compound eyes ; e , three simple eyes.

animal that has its teeth on its tongue. Amongst others I may remind you of the great black slug which is so fond of our garden plants ; it has no fewer than 26,800 teeth, all on its tongue, and these are so hard, being formed of flint,

BUSYBODIES.

that they will blunt the edge of a sharp penknife when pressed against them. You are more familiar, perhaps, with the “ penny winkle;” it has about 24,000 of these 4eeth, all on its tongue, which forms the palate of its mouth.

But this cutting and scraping tongue of the ant is the only stock-in-trade of tools it possesses, and with it all its labour has to be done. What this is wTe shall see in another chapter ; but I think you will see how much better off the bee is than the ant; and, like the agricultural labourer, how very clever the ant is, who also, with so simple an instrument, can produce such cunning and clever wrork. And so, just as I think the labourer excelled above the architect, so do I think the ant excels above the bee ; and so it was, I believe, that Solomon selected the one above 4he other as a pattern of wisdom. \