ANTS, NO PROVIDERS. 87 



under the prodigious burthen of a wheat or barley-corn ; but 

 this, it would appear, is employed for building rather than for 

 food, a few scattered grains being often mingled with the bits 

 of stick and straw used by the "Wood- Ants to thatch or cover 

 in their conical abodes. Our busy villager represents a member 

 of one of these sylvan communities, and we have considered 

 her of the feminine gender, not merely to compliment "the 

 sex' : on their common virtues of industry and of generous 

 unselfish kindness, nor yet to censure them for their as 

 common want of thought or prospective calculation; but 

 simply, because all Ant labourers are females, though distin- 

 guished from those which become the wives and mothers of 

 the community. ' ' Go then to the Ant," ye spinsters ! " con- 

 sider her ways, and be wise." See how in her state of 

 single blessedness, she makes herself, by active uses, one of 

 the greatest blessings of her own society, and be the same of 

 yours ! 



And now for the way in which these Ant communities pass 

 the winter, and for the neighbours to whom they are accus- 

 tomed to apply in time of need. These have been already 

 glanced at under the guise of fable. In the plain garb of 

 corresponding fact, let us look at them a little more closely, as 

 their doings stand recorded in some right pleasant and vera- 

 cious chronicles of the Formic Nations.* "Ants" says their 

 historian, " usually become torpid during the intense cold, but 



* Huber on Ants, p. 239. 



