THE WHITE ANT: A THEORY 



735 



despotism of the miserable German princelings of the sixteenth and 

 seventeenth centuries with the reign of the Emperor William. 



The gain is not simply that mankind has arrived at a clearer con- 

 ception of law in the universe ; not merely that thinking men see 

 more clearly that we are part of a system not requiring constant patch- 

 ing and arbitrary interference ; but perhaps best of all is the fact that 

 science has cleared away one more series of dogmas which tend to 

 debase rather than to develop man's whole moral and religious nature. 

 In this emancipation from terror and fanaticism, as in so many other 

 results of scientific thinking, we have a proof of the inspiration of 

 those great words, " The truth shall make you free." 



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THE WHITE ANT: A THEORY. 



By Professor HENEY DEUMMOND, F. E. S. E., F. G. S., 



AUTHOR OF " NATURAL LAW IK THE SPIRITUAL "WORLD," ETC. 



A FEW years ago, under the distinguished patronage of Mr. Dar- 

 win, the animal in vogue with scientific society was the worm. 

 At present the fashionable animal is the ant. I am sorry, therefore, to 

 have to begin by confessing that the insect whose praises I propose to 

 sing, although bearing the honored name, is not entitled to considera- 

 tion on account of its fashionable connections, since the white ant, as 

 an ant, is an impostor. It is, in fact, not an ant at all, but belongs to 

 a much humbler family that of the Termitidce and, so far from ever 

 having been the vogue, this clever but artful creature is hated and 

 despised by all civilized peoples. Nevertheless, if I mistake not, there 

 is neither among the true ants, nor among the worms, an insect which 

 plays a more wonderful or important part in nature. 



Fully to appreciate the beauty of this function, a glance at an 

 apparently distant aspect of nature will be necessary as a preliminary. 



When we watch the farmer at work, and think how he has to 

 plow, harrow, manure, and humor the soil before even one good crop 

 can be coaxed out of it, we are apt to wonder how Nature manages to 

 secure her crops and yet dispense with all these accessories. The 

 world is one vast garden, bringing forth crops of the most luxuriant 

 and varied kind century after century, and millennium after millen- 

 nium. Yet the face of Nature is nowhere furrowed by the plow, no 

 harrow disintegrates the clods, no lime and phosphates are strewed 

 upon its fields, no visible tillage of the soil improves the work on 

 the great world's farm. 



Now, in reality there can not be crops, or successions of crops, with- 

 out the most thorough agriculture ; and when we look more closely 

 into nature we discover a system of husbandry of the most surprising 



