The Wonders of an Underground World By futuun po C, Sowenny When Solomon said:—"Go to the ant, thou sluggard," probably he had no knowledge whatsoever of the White Ant or termite. Undoubte ly he was referring to the various forms of true: ant inhabiting the region over which he was. kin and in so doing he was offering the receivers of his precepts very sound advice, though one cannot help wondering why he did not say the bee, which has become the very epitome of industry to energetic present-day Europeans and Americans. The true ants, that is to say, the insects which are closely related to the bees and wasps, belonging to the same order, Hymenoptera, are busy crowd, and their energy and industry, not to mention their well-organized social life, well might have appealed to the all wise king of ancient Israel, but one ventures to think that, had he known of the existence of the termites, or white ants, as they popularly are called, he would have told his sluggard slaves, or, perhaps it was his sons, to go to the termitary and thera learn of the wisdom and genius of the white ant, with its boundless industry, ingenuity, and fore= thought, albeit these partake of the nature of blind instinct rather than conscious effort.
We are wont to marvel whenever we come across something in nature that reminds us of ourselves ind our own social development. ud achievements, as if we were not a part of nature, and had not derived all we are and have from the same sources as the rest of creation, We have duly wondered at the bees and their cousins, the ants, and cur literature is full of references to them, but, except in the accounts of travellare and expeditions in the tropics, we find ttle about the termite even tis mainly descriptions of the extraordinary amount of destruc tion they do, The marvels of social organization and life mer have been hinted at, and mostly they have Ween classed with the true ants as a group of social me sects, a Tittle lower and less interesting than the ants, because apparently less energetic, less active, and existing on altogether " lower plane,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.