'58 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS LESSONS. 



"Yet wert thou once a worm, a thing that crept 

 On the bare earth, then wrought a tomb and slept ; 

 And such is man, soon, from his cell of clay, 

 To burst a seraph in a blaze of day ! " 



Our next object shall be an ant, fancy it so dissected 

 that all its muscles are to be seen, by which you may 

 learn how it is that this little model of perseverance can 

 accomplish such astonishing feats of strength. I need not 

 do more than describe to you the object, having told you 

 all I know of ants in " Solomon's Little People," but I 

 may tell you a useful story I recently heard of an ant. 

 Its home had been broken up, and in tke crash its leg was 

 broken. It was a nurse, and had the charge of the babies, 

 and, though it could only crawl along with difficulty, it 

 never forsook its charge ; and this poor wounded creature 

 actually succeeded in carrying away ten of the baby ants 

 to their new settlement before the repairs were completed. 

 Learn from this that, however weak or unfortunate we 

 may be, there is always something, either in service or 

 suffering, that we can do for the good of others. 



Now observe its muscular structure. Muscles ! Do 

 you know that the body of a caterpillar I had presented 

 to me one day, that of the great goat moth, contained 

 about ten times the number of muscles that were to be 

 found in my own ? It led me a pretty dance. Coming 

 to me carefully imprisoned in a deal box, I laid it on 

 our hall table, and, shortly after doing so, I was about to 

 experiment on the creature, when, on opening the box, 

 to my surprise, it had discovered the weakest part of the 

 wood, and had eaten its way through. I hunted every- 

 where, and, several days after, I found it snugly concealed 

 in the seat of a sofa, in a room separated from the hall 

 by a number of stairs and a long passage : it had six- 

 teen legs, and it knew how to use them but its muscles! 



