by the gleaners.  ‘They do not appear,’ says Sir John Lubbock, ‘to have considered the rights of the ants.’  Indeed our duty towards insects is a question which seems hitherto to have escaped the notice of all moral philosophers.  Even Mr. Herbert Spencer, the prophet of individualism, has never taken exception to our gross disregard of the proprietary rights of bees in their honey, or of silkworms in their cocoons.  There are signs, however, that the obtuse human conscience is awakening in this respect; for when Dr. Loew suggested to bee-keepers the desirability of testing the commercial value of honey-ants, as rivals to the bee, Dr. McCook replied that ’the sentiment against the use of honey thus taken from living insects, which is worthy of all respect, would not be easily overcome.’

There are no harvesting ants in Northern Europe, though they extend as far as Syria, Italy, and the Riviera, in which latter station I have often observed them busily working.  What most careless observers take for grain in the nests of English ants are of course really the cocoons of the pupae.  For many years, therefore, entomologists were under the impression that Solomon had fallen into this popular error, and that when he described the ant as ‘gathering her food in the harvest’ and ‘preparing her meat in the summer,’ he was speaking rather as a poet than as a strict naturalist.  Later observations, however, have vindicated the general accuracy of the much-married king by showing that true harvesting ants do actually occur in Syria, and that they lay by stores for the winter in the very way stated by that early entomologist, whose knowledge of ‘creeping things’ is specially enumerated in the long list of his universal accomplishments.

Dr. Lincecum of Texan fame has even improved upon Solomon by his discovery of those still more interesting and curious creatures, the agricultural ants of Texas.  America is essentially a farming country, and the agricultural ants are born farmers.  They make regular clearings around their nests, and on these clearings they allow nothing to grow except a particular kind of grain, known as ant-rice.  Dr. Lincecum maintains that the tiny farmers actually sow and cultivate the ant-rice.  Dr. McCook, on the other hand, is of opinion that the rice sows itself, and that the insects’ part is limited to preventing any other plants or weeds from encroaching on the appropriated area.  In any case, be they squatters or planters, it is certain that the rice, when ripe, is duly harvested, and that it is, to say the least, encouraged by the ants, to the exclusion of all other competitors.  ’After the maturing and harvesting of the seed,’ says Dr. Lincecum, ’the dry stubble is cut away and removed from the pavement, which is thus left fallow until the ensuing autumn, when the same species of grass, and in the same circle, appears again, and receives the same agricultural care as did the previous crop.’  Sir John Lubbock, indeed, goes so far as to say that the three stages of human progress—­the hunter, the herdsman, and the agriculturist—­are all to be found among various species of existing ants.