IX 



HORTICULTURISTS 



Probably there are few passages in the Old Testa- 

 ment that have been so much quoted outside 

 theological circles as Solomon's injunction to the 

 sluggard — to go to the Ant and consider her ways. 

 For hundreds of years it was generally accepted 

 that the further part of it contained the statement 

 that she hoarded up grain to tide the community 

 over the winter. There is, of course, nothing of 

 the kind in the passage ; but " profane " writers 

 among the ancients, and of all periods down to the 

 middle of the eighteenth century, were emphatic 

 in speaking of the Ant as a storer of grain. It was 

 not until after 1747, when Gould published his 

 Account of English Ants, that the Ant began to be 

 discounted as a moral object-lesson and Solomon 

 as a veracious chronicler. 



Gould, drawing his information entirely from his 

 studies of our native species, declared that ants 

 do not store up corn. Huber, the great historian 

 of the Ant, probably ignorant of Gould's work, 

 made the same assertion. Kirby and Spence, 

 having studied Gould and Huber, were content to 



211 



