181 

 NOTES ON THE ANT OF SCRIPTURE. 



BY J. LONGMUIR^ ESQ., JDN. 



There is an extensive authorship connected with many of the animals, 

 and most of the plants of Scripture. Perhaps more has been written on the 

 subject of the following notes than on most of its associates whose names 

 are recorded, or whose customs are alluded to in the Bible. If all the pages 

 that have appeared in times long gone by, or but a month ago, were collected, 

 that bear on the matter to be brought under consideration, a minature 

 library of the most diversified pamphlets — diversified as to style, language, 

 matter, and size would be the speedy result. The cumbrous pages of a 

 Bochart would contrast strangely with the few, but, to speak comparatively, 

 common-sense notes of Thaddeus (not Moses) Harris, the ingenious argument- 

 ations of a writer in the "Biblical Cyclopaedia," with the few but well chosen, 

 as well as facetious statements of the author of the "Episodes of Insect Life," 

 and the difiidcnt opinion of a Kirby with Addison's elegant rendering of a 

 letter addressed to the French Academy. 



Notwithstanding all these laborious researches, minute investigations, and 

 interesting experiments, the difficulties connected with the subject have not 

 been cleared away. The learned writings of the scholar and the studies of 

 the Naturalist, have but served "to make the darkness visible." These men 

 found the Bible student at the foot of a lengthy flight of stairs, and manage- 

 ed with great labour on their part, and no little difficulty on his, to get 

 him to commence the ascent. They were unable to bring him farther on his 

 way than a landing-place, midway between the starting point and the top; 

 at best it was but a dark landing-place ; and so he could not go farther 

 without lights. He has had a dreary stand of it, and there is beginning to 

 be more of despair than of hope in his mind ; he seems also much afraid 

 that the promised light will never come, and is at times tempted to escape 

 from the drear darkness by an expedient hinted to him by Kirby, Kitto, and 

 others. Yet he his bold enough to think these counsels too good to be true, 

 and so, in the spirit of honesty, finally rejects them. It is our intention in 

 the following remarks, to explain to the inexperienced reader, who may not have 

 made the subject a matter of examination, the position in which he, the Bible 

 student, has been left, and to bring a light sufficient we trust to enlighten his 

 gloomy station as well as to assist him in reaching the top. 



To begin at the beginning then. The "Royal Preacher," in adducing the 

 Ant as an example worthy of consideration to the sluggard and the idler, 

 says of it, — "which, having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat 

 in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest." What may be drawn 

 from this? Although it is true that Solomon does not say directly that the 

 Ant lays up grain for wint-er provision, or that it lays up grain at all, who 

 will not at once admit that there is every reason from the words just quo- 

 ted for the opinion that the Ant lays up in its subterranean magazine a store 



