54 ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 



CHAPTER V. 



ANTS IN HISTORY. 



FT1HE remarkable qualities of the ant have at no time and 

 J_ at no place been quite hidden from man, and have been 

 more or less recognised and praised by him. In some places 

 in Arabia as Freitag states in his Arabic-Latin Dictionary, 

 vol. iv., p. 339, under the Arabic word for ant they put an 

 ant into the hand of the newborn child, so that the ant's 

 virtues may pass into the young life. In ancient literature 

 there are many notices of ants and of their remarkable cha- 

 racteristics. " Go to the ant, thou sluggard," says Solomon 

 in his Proverbs, chap, vi., v. 6 8, " consider her ways and 

 be wise ; which, having no guide, overseer, or ruler, pro- 

 videth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in 

 the harvest." And chap, xxx., v. 25, "The ants are a 

 people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the 

 summer." In the Mishna, the collected traditional and 

 unwritten laws of the Jews, which was begun after the 

 birth of Christ under the presidentship of Hillel, and pre- 

 serves the memory of many old and otherwise forgotten 

 habits and customs, the ants and their granaries are men- 

 tioned in connexion with the rights of the gleaners at 

 harvest-time. " The granaries of the ants," it is written, 

 " which are found in the midst of a growing cornfield, shall 

 belong to the owner of the field ; but of the granaries which 

 are found after the reapers have passed, the upper half of 

 each 'shall belong to the poor, the lower to the owner." 

 And it is further said : " Rabbi Meir is of opinion that the 

 whole should belong to the poor, since in dubious points of 

 gleaning, the doubt is always in the gleaner's favor." The 

 object of the above cited law plainly is that corn gathered 

 by the ants from the cornfields before harvest shall go to 

 the owner, while that which is collected by the ants after 

 reaping, and must therefore lie on the surface of their 



