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.