NATURE'S CRAFTSMEN 



But when we consider the myriads of ants at work, and 

 the vast period of time in which they have wrought in 

 unrestricted spheres in all parts of the world, the results 

 are by no means insignificant. 



An interesting chapter in the relations of insects to 

 men traverses the history of human superstitions. 

 Religion, love, and marriage, disease, death, war, travel, 

 success in pleasure and business, have all been held to be 

 under the spell of one or another insect. This is but a 

 fragment of that impulse which led even the most civil- 

 ized nations of antiquity into animal worship. The 

 mystery of life and its development into strange and 

 varied forms, comely and grotesque, helpful and harm- 

 ful, was far greater to the ancients than to moderns. 

 The familiar truths which natural science has disclosed 

 were to them insoluble secrets within the bosom of an 

 unresponsive Sphinx. 



Yet they were more directly dependent upon animals, 

 and lived far closer to them than we. So it befell that 

 living creatures became emblems and representatives of 

 the good and the evil in their lives. The forces that 

 guarded and blessed them in their flocks and herds, in 

 war and in the chase, were symbolized in the cow, the 

 bull, the ram, the dog, the elephant. Creatures that 

 held their lives in terror seemed to them exponents of 

 dreadful superior powers which they must propitiate. 

 Thus arose a worship of gratitude and a worship of fear, 

 directed by the few, it may be, to deities or daemons 

 that the animals symbolized, but by the multitude to 

 the animals themselves. 



In this category insects have a place. Folk-lore pre- 

 sents curious illustrations of the impression made by 

 insects upon the simpler periods and ruder races of 



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