An Individual Community
A correspondent recently wrote to ask what place the ant held in the economy of nature. What a number of
answers, not all serious, could be given. They provide the favourite food of woodpeckers and partridges in especial and other birds promiscuously. The nests of some species are used for composing hard tennis-courts 1 They pointed one of the oldest of moral maxims : " Go to the ant, thou sluggard." They act in some woodland species as useful destroyers of timber. Doubtless their abuses are more apparent to man. Australian houses are eaten to pieces in some of the back blocks unless they arc tee'd up on ant- proof pillars. They are a plague in a garden. In my garden they used to climb to the top of the highest pear tree and nibble the stalk end of every other pear. They may be called the cleverest of all insects. Their communism is not regardleSs of the individual, as among the bees, and a good many of their actions appear to go counter to the very definition of instinct. So far from being blind, they adapt themselves quickly and ingeaiously to particular circumstances. They fulfil the oddly phrased commendation of Milton :
" In parsimonious ommet provident Of future, in small room large heart enclosed."
They live their life ; and that is their place in the economy of nature.
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