86 ERRORS ON ANTS. 



whereas the individual of our story shewed herself something 

 more than pretense, not only willing to lend her labour, but 

 ready to impart of all she had her little hard-won store, to 

 her neighbours and fellow- workers. The avaricious Ant she 

 could never be. An Ant, nevertheless, and nothing else, is 

 intended to be represented by our sleeper awakened of the 

 straw-roofed dwelling, only that her portrait is not painted 

 after the old masters or their modern copyists, whose pictures, 

 with the exception of one grand feature, that of industry, are 

 totally unlike those drawn from the life by close observers. 

 The policy of Eastern Ants may possibly reach farther than 

 that of European, and whatever they did in the days of Solomon 

 they certainly do still. Perhaps even, wheresoever the Ant 

 Tribes may be scattered among the Tribes of Israel, they may 

 have learnt from the prudent people with whom they dwell, 

 always to forecast, and never to lend without good interest. 

 This might furnish a point of enquiry for Physiologists of 

 Insect Mind; but our business is with Ants in general, of 

 whom it is commonly supposed that they have store-house and 

 barn for winter provender, and of whom it has been further 

 fabled, that they know how to keep their corn in due order, by 

 cleverly biting off the germinating end. Now though they 

 arc acquainted with practices quite as cunning even as tliis, 

 it would seem, after all, that the mystery of harvesting is to 

 them unknown. Now and then indeed, we may see one of these 

 indefatigable workers, alone or assisted by a comrade, toiling 



