We read also that in forests in Switzerland and Sweden the ants form lofty hillocks which serve as a compass to travellers who have lost their way by night or in a fog. The nests being always made from east to west, their peak is at the east end, which is steep, the ridge sloping, however, gently down to the nest. So the wanderer can tell from these ant-hills in which direction he ought to go.
Tamerlane, the great Tartar prince, learned a helpful lesson from an ant once, when he had taken refuge from the pursuing enemy in a ruined building. Having to stay there for hours, at the end of his resources, ready to give way to despair, his attention was attracted by an ant which was carrying something larger than itself up a high wall. Noticing that it often let its burden drop, he began to count the number of times that it began the ascent again, and he found that sixty-nine times it failed, its burden falling to the ground. The seventieth time was a success. "This sight," he said, "gave me courage at the moment, and I have never forgotten the lesson it taught me."
Our own ants afford a marvellous study for those who can and will give a little time to—as Solomon says—the considering of their ways. Ants are said to stand higher than any other insects in intelligence—so-called instinct. And insects in general have more of this faculty developed in them than have any other creatures. They are watchful, unwearying nurses; they take the eggs out on fine warm days so as to warm and strengthen the coming ants, and they will wait, to be cut in bits, rather than forsake their charge. When the eggs are hatched, the nurses clean and brush their young, and even shampoo the thin skin which cover their limbs, so that they can go free. Each grown ant knows its own business and can, when necessary, fight its own battles, and yet there is always a community; they have all things in common and work for the general good. They are enduring, persevering, faithful in friendships, and most industrious. One writer has said, in describing an ant-hill, that whilst there was a twittering of birds, and a buzz and hum of insect life around, the ants were all silent, only "the sort of low hiss which arose from the collected workers, resembled the noise of a London street more than any form of speech."
Their power of self-sacrifice is a marvellous fact. A man once saw a line of ants, on travel, trying to pass a little rapid stream. They hooked themselves on to each other so as to form a chain which was carried in a slanting direction by the current to the opposite shore. Many of this chain were drowned, dropping off in the forming process; those in front were often baffled and overwhelmed in the rushing current. At last the bridge was completed and the main body of the army of ants marched across the stream in safety upon the massed bodies of their self-sacrificing companions.
Milton has written of "the parsimonious emmet, provident of the future...." "In small room, large heart enclosed." A writer has stated that a son of Mr. Darwin dissected the head and brain of an ant, which latter the great scientist declared to be "one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world," more marvellous even than the brain of man. Speaking of the brain of ants, Sir John Lubbock says, "The head bears the principal organs of sense, and contains the brain, as the anterior portion of the nervous system may fairly be called."
Forethought is at the root of all thrift, and thrift underlies all civilisation as well as personal well-being. We seem at times, some of us, rather to despise a saving disposition, as if this necessarily implied meanness in its subject. Yet the greatest benefactors of our race have been nearly all great savers at some period of their lives. And there is little true generosity in the soul of the woman who spends all she gets, even if her means go largely to others, if, through failing to lay by something for a rainy day, during the winter of life she is thrown on the charity of her fellows for her support. As someone says, nothing should be left at loose ends. It is only the few who become rich through large undertakings, the majority of mankind prosper by means of carefulness and the practice of the details of thrift. "Thrift is the best means of thriving."
Let us end this little study by reminding ourselves of that thoughtful dictum of Ruskin's, "Economy, whether public or private, means the wise management of labour ... first applying your labour rationally; secondly, preserving its produce carefully; lastly, distributing its produce seasonably."
(To be continued.)