ENGINEERING METHODS 



cruelly exacted. We have already seen that the ants 

 rendered free and willing service, and that their toil was 

 without overseers, and wholly of individual selection. 

 From the beginning to the end there was no discord 

 among them; no protests; no strikes, sympathetic or 

 otherwise; no walking delegates or their insect analogues; 

 no oppressing (or oppressed) contractors or owners. 

 Indeed, there was no occasion for any of these frequent 

 appendages of great modern structures whereon human 

 workingmen artisans, mechanics, and common laborers 

 -are engaged. 



And yet the work was done, and on undertakings 

 relatively many times greater, in the most perfect har- 

 mony, good temper and content of all. Is it possible 

 for man to draw some lessons from this example of 

 natural civics? Is it beyond hope that some goodly 

 measure of such results may lie within the sphere of the 

 practicable for our current organized society? Does 

 our "civilization' 1 hopelessly encumber us from ever 

 attaining the ideal commune? Must it lie in the bright 

 cloud-realm of the optimist's dreams, until alas! can 

 it ever be?> the whole race, reborn and disenthralled, 

 shall return to the unsullied simplicity of nature? 



It may be drawing too fine a distinction in the build- 

 ing work of ants to discriminate between architecture 

 and engineering. Yet we seem to note such a distinc- 

 tion. The commune of the agricultural ant, already 

 described, is differenced from its fellows by the circular 

 disk (Fig. 34) that surrounds its central gate or en- 

 trance. The construction of this disk, and its main- 

 tenance as a free and open plaza in the midst of the 

 surrounding subtropical foliage, are works for which no 



little skill and energy are required (Fig. 35). 

 5 55 



