The laborious life and foresight of the Ant have been celebrated throughout all antiquity, and from the wise Solomon down to the amiable La Fontaine, the sluggard has been referred to this insect to "learn her ways and be wise."[497] The Arabians held the wisdom of these animals in such estimation, that they used to place one of them in the hands of a newly-born infant, repeating these words: "May the boy turn out clever and skillful."[498] But their wisdom is magnified by all, and in the panegyrics of their providence we always find the following curious notion. Plutarch, in his Land and Water Creatures Compared, thus mentions it: "But that which surpasseth all other prudence, policy, and wit, is their (the Ants') caution and prevention which they use, that their wheat and other corn may not spurt and grow. For this is certain, that dry it cannot continue alwayes, nor sound and uncorrupt, but in time will wax soft, resolve into a milky juice, when it turneth and beginneth to swell and chit; for fear, therefore, that it become not a generative seed, and so by growing, loose the nature and property of food for their nourishment, _they gnaw that end thereof or head where it is wont to spurt and bud forth_."[499]
The ancients, observing the Ants carry their pupæ, which in shape, size, and color very much resemble a grain of corn, and the ends of which they sometimes pull open to let out the inclosed insect, no doubt mistook the one for the other, and this action for depriving the grain of the embryo of the plant.
Some modern writers, as Addison[500] and Pluche,[501] it is curious to observe, have fallen into this ancient error; so ancient, in fact, it is that some have supposed the Hebrew name of the Ant to be derived from it.[502] Among the poets, Prior asks:
Tell me, why the _Ant_ In _summer's plenty thinks of winter's want_? By constant journey _careful to prepare Her stores_, and _bringing home the corny ear_, By what instruction _does she bite the grain_? Lest, hid in earth, and taking root again, It might elude the foresight of her care.[503]
They don't wear their time out in sleeping or play; But _gather up corn_ in a sunshiny day, And _for winter they lay up their stores_: They manage their work in such regular forms, One would think they _foresaw_ all the frosts and the storms, And so _brought their food within doors_.[504]