250 GO TO THE ANT 



marauding slaveowners, who attacked and made serfs of 

 other ants. But gradually they lost not only their arts but 

 even their military prowess, and were reduced to making 

 war by stealth instead of openly carrying off their slaves 

 in fair battle. It seems probable that they now creep into 

 a nest of the far more powerful slave ants, poison or 

 assassinate the queen, and establish themselves by sheer 

 usurpation in the queenless nest. 'Gradually,' says Sir 

 John Lubbock, ♦ even their bodily force dwindled away 

 under the enervating influence to which they had subjected 

 themselves, until they sank to their present degraded con- 

 dition — weak in body and mind, few in numbers, and 

 apparently nearly extinct, the miserable representatives of 

 far superior ancestors maintaining a precarious existence 

 as contemptible parasites of their former slaves.' One 

 may observe in passing that these wretched do-nothings 

 cannot have been the ants which Solomon commended to 

 the favourable consideration of the sluggard ; though it is 

 curious that the text was never pressed into the service of 

 defence for the peculiar institution by the advocates of 

 slavery in the South, who were always most anxious to 

 prove the righteousness of their caus., by most sure and 

 certain warranty of Holy Scripture. 



