In any case, the life of a
honey-bearer must be singularly uneventful, not to say dull and
monotonous; but no doubt any small inconvenience in this respect must be
more than compensated for by the glorious consciousness that one is
sacrificing one's own personal comfort for the common good of universal
anthood. Perhaps, however, the ants have not yet reached the Positivist
stage, and may be totally ignorant of the enthusiasm of formicity.
Equally curious are the habits and manners of the harvesting ants, the
species which Solomon seems to have had specially in view when he
advised his hearers to go to the ant--a piece of advice which I have
also adopted as the title of the present article, though I by no means
intend thereby to insinuate that the readers of this volume ought
properly to be classed as sluggards. These industrious little creatures
abound in India: they are so small that it takes eight or ten of them to
carry a single grain of wheat or barley; and yet they will patiently
drag along their big burden for five hundred or a thousand yards to the
door of their formicary. To prevent the grain from germinating, they
bite off the embryo root--a piece of animal intelligence outdone by
another species of ant, which actually allows the process of budding to
begin, so as to produce sugar, as in malting. After the last
thunderstorms of the monsoon the little proprietors bring up all the
grain from their granaries to dry in the tropical sunshine.
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