The quantity
of grain stored up by the harvesting ants is often so large that the
hair-splitting Jewish casuists of the Mishna have seriously discussed
the question whether it belongs to the landowner or may lawfully be
appropriated by the gleaners. 'They do not appear,' says Sir John
Lubbock, 'to have considered the rights of the ants.' Indeed our duty
towards insects is a question which seems hitherto to have escaped the
notice of all moral philosophers. Even Mr. Herbert Spencer, the prophet
of individualism, has never taken exception to our gross disregard of
the proprietary rights of bees in their honey, or of silkworms in their
cocoons. There are signs, however, that the obtuse human conscience is
awakening in this respect; for when Dr. Loew suggested to bee-keepers
the desirability of testing the commercial value of honey-ants, as
rivals to the bee, Dr. McCook replied that 'the sentiment against the
use of honey thus taken from living insects, which is worthy of all
respect, would not be easily overcome.'
There are no harvesting ants in Northern Europe, though they extend as
far as Syria, Italy, and the Riviera, in which latter station I have
often observed them busily working. What most careless observers take
for grain in the nests of English ants are of course really the cocoons
of the pupae. For many years, therefore, entomologists were under the
impression that Solomon had fallen into this popular error, and that
when he described the ant as 'gathering her food in the harvest' and
'preparing her meat in the summer,' he was speaking rather as a poet
than as a strict naturalist.
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