INTRODUCTORY.
Christ, the divine teacher, has taught us to go to nature for moral and
spiritual lessons. "Consider the lilies of the field," He says to those
who are anxious about, and careworn with the things of this life: and
that old triangle of a problem with its hard points: "What shall we
eat? what shall we drink? and wherewithal shall we be clothed?" does
press heavily on many even of those who read our GIRL'S OWN PAPER.
The fall of the sparrow, too, He tells us, is noted by His Father and
ours. He bids those who are neglectful of the talents given to them,
learn a lesson of the barren fig-tree. Again the rapid and marvellous
development of the mustard-tree, in the mouth of the great teacher,
becomes an image of the faith that He bids us have. And even when
speaking of the yearning love He had for souls, He did not disdain to
use the simile: "As a hen gathereth her young." And so, if the eyes
are quick to note all that surrounds us, all the wonderful life, "the
infinitely small" as well as "the infinitely great," and the heart
makes room for love, it will be possible to learn, from the first year
of our lives, until the day of our death here, lessons from nature
which no man or woman has ever yet exhausted, nor ever will.
One of my earliest memories is of an old-world garden where our mother,
who was an ardent lover of the beautiful, would direct the attention of
my sisters and myself to the pencilling on the petal of this and that
flower. God's finger painted the velvety face of the pansy, she told
us. And how often I pondered over this expression and wondered if that
finger did its work in the garden when we were asleep.
Our dear mother gave us a love for nature which has been our resource
and consolation in many a sorrow, and which has filled the void of what
would otherwise have been weary, monotonous hours.
Ruskin said, "Despise the earth or slander it, fix your eyes on its
gloom and forget its loveliness, and we do not thank you for your
languid or despairing perception of brightness in Heaven. But rise up
actively on the earth, learn what there is in it, and when, after that,
you say 'Heaven is bright,' it will be a precious truth." Lord Bacon
spoke fitly of the "_respondences_ of nature," and he with many other
great minds has dwelt on the marvellous analogies of nature. These
analogies are indeed evidences of the unity of creation. And there
are prefigurations which we may note in the animal kingdom, in the
various habits of the creatures, their works, economies and instincts.
Human art is prefigured in the work of the bee, the wasp, and the
beaver. Democritus averred that men learned weaving from spiders and
architecture from birds. Virgil said that the bees had in them a
portion of the divine mind.
The Psalmist likened a good man to a tree planted by a river;
Wordsworth writes constantly in a strain which bears witness to his
belief that between man and the flowers of the field there is the
closest affinity; in quaint George Herbert's poems we note also the
same teaching. Look them up, if you do not remember them, especially
that dear one called "The Flower."
How many great men have been influenced in their careers, careers which
have been great factors in the world's growth, by the sight of what to
many an unobservant or unthinking mind would seem too insignificant an
object for notice.
There was the great traveller and explorer, Mungo Park, who was
employed by the so-called African association to explore the interior
regions of Africa. Once, weary, disappointed, and baffled, he was on
the point of giving way to despair, when he suddenly came on a little
plant the sight of which, and the thoughts which its beauty suggested,
revived his courage and probably saved his life.
Most of you will remember also that beautiful story of Picciola, the
prison flower, the seed of which had fallen on the paved yard of a
prison where a noble Italian was confined. When he was in the lowest
state of despondency, and in danger perhaps of madness, the tiny
plant awakened interest, and daily delighted the poor prisoner as its
beauties unfolded, opening a little world of interest to the starved
heart and mind. When at last he was set at liberty he caused his
wall-flower to be transplanted and placed it in a border, in a place of
honour in his castle grounds. It had been made the instrument of his
salvation.
Some persons talk of things being insignificant or too small to notice.
Perhaps it will surprise some of our readers to hear that a common
house-fly is said to occupy the middle place in creation as regards the
size of known creatures. Most people can see big things, but the gift
of seeing tiny objects belongs rather to the few, and yet it may be
cultivated, and great enjoyment may be found in observing things which
seem to common minds to be unworthy of note--the simple, homely, and
smaller life that surrounds us. Mr. Leo Grindon, a great student of
life and a noted botanist, says very truly--
"To learn how to see and delight in little things, as well as in large,
is, in fact, to make no slight progress both in true intelligence and
in aptitude for genuine pleasure. Many laugh at the idea of being
pleased with little things, which, they say, 'please little minds.'
They should remember that the great mass of the population of our
planet consists of the merest pigmies, diminutive birds and fishes,
tiny insects, animalcules, only visible through a microscope, so
that to turn away from little things is to be indifferent to almost
everything the world contains. Besides, with Uranus eighty times
greater than the whole earth, Neptune a hundred and fifty times
greater, Saturn more than seven hundred times, and Jupiter more than
fourteen hundred, it is rather inconsistent to talk about littleness in
the objects of a world itself (comparatively) so puny."
"Our spring is in our lightsome girlish days."
Spring is the season of growth. Let us try to promote a healthy mental
growth by studying together in the wonderful book of nature and
appropriating some of those helpful lessons which she has to teach us.
THE PROVIDENT ANT.
The wise man, in the Book of Proverbs, speaks of the ant as one of
"four things which are little upon the earth," and yet are "exceeding
wise." He says that the ants are "a people not strong, yet they prepare
their meat in the summer." That is, when all in nature is at its
richest, when food abounds, they use forethought and gather in enough
to sustain themselves before the winter draws near, and the usual food
supplies have failed.
The Book of Job, that Eastern drama which is so wonderful in its
lessons suited to human experiences in all time, is marvellously
comprehensive in its illustrations drawn from the natural world. We are
taken there into the regions of ice and snow, and again we pass through
the rich verdure of the tropics. We try to sound the frozen deeps, and
anon survey the hot desert plains; we wander where the lion seeks his
prey, and through dense forests where behemoth, or the elephant, feeds.
The coral and the pearls are there, so are the gold ore, the iron, and
the brass. The Author shows us the ostrich "that scorneth the horse and
its rider, the hawk that stretched her wings towards the south like our
peregrine, the wander falke"--the eagle that makes her nest on high yet
"is with the slain on the earth beneath." And this great observer says,
"Ask now the beasts and they shall teach thee, and the fowls and they
shall tell thee, or speak to the earth and it shall teach thee, and the
fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee."
[Illustration: THE WOOD ANT (_Formica rufa_).
(_a_) Male; (_b_) female; (_c_) worker.]
The lessons to be learned from the ant are, of course, diligence and
a careful or prudent forethought for the future. Solomon says that
the ant "has no guide, overseer, or ruler," yet she provides, having
gathered in during the summer and the harvest time. How many of us
there are who seem to need tutors and governors to urge us on through
the duties of life, not only in childhood, but far on into man and
womanhood. Compulsory pressure from without alone rouses some of us to
action. Man thinks himself the lord of creation, and is yet far outdone
by a weak insect, not only in energy and persistent work, but often
positively in intelligence.
Perhaps you have, many of you, read of the so-called warrior ants, the
_Termites bellicosi_ of the more tropical regions. They do not belong
to the same order of insects as our own ants, and we are happily not
subjected to the havoc which their building and devouring works. Two
species of termites have, however, got established in France, notably
in Rochefort, La Rochelle, and Aix, and there they have undermined and
utterly ruined a number of houses. In one town they gnawed away the
supports of a dining-room before their ravages were detected, and the
floor gave way during a party, the host and his guests suddenly falling
through together.
Artillery charged with grapeshot has been employed to destroy great
fortresses that these ants have made in a tropical country. In South
Africa the termites work enormous havoc. They live in a social republic
of their own. Some of them, the males, have wings; the workmen, the
soldiers, and the queens however have none. The workmen construct their
buildings, the soldiers defend the colony and keep order, and the
females, or queens, are worshipped by all the others. These become in
point of fact mere egg-laying machines, which have at last to remain
tied to one spot.
Twenty feet high their nesting-homes often are, and pyramidal in shape.
Wild cattle can climb upon them with impunity without crushing them,
the walls are so solid. A dozen men can find shelter in some of their
chambers, and native hunters do often lie in wait inside them when
out after wild animals. They construct galleries also which are as
wide as the bore of a large cannon, and which run three and four feet
underground. The nests are said to be five hundred times as high as the
ant's body, and it has been estimated that if we built our houses as
high, proportionately, they would be four or five times as high as the
pyramids of Egypt, on which we look with such wonder and awe.
In speaking of the havoc some ants make, let us also remember some good
service rendered. In the West Indies there is a red cockroach which is
four times as large as the English one. It smells horridly, and scents
everything that it touches, is far more destructive than the ant, and
quite omnivorous. Now, although one cockroach in bulk outweighs two
hundred ants, the latter little creatures kill and devour innumerable
cockroaches. Whenever an ant comes upon a cockroach that is at rest,
eating, or in its hole, suddenly myriads appear, swarm round it, as if
by magic, surround it completely, and then, with one consent, rush all
over it, and as it is dragged away, you see only a mass of ants moving
along. All the time they carry they are busily devouring it, until only
its shell is left.
We read also that in forests in Switzerland and Sweden the ants form
lofty hillocks which serve as a compass to travellers who have lost
their way by night or in a fog. The nests being always made from east
to west, their peak is at the east end, which is steep, the ridge
sloping, however, gently down to the nest. So the wanderer can tell
from these ant-hills in which direction he ought to go.
Tamerlane, the great Tartar prince, learned a helpful lesson from
an ant once, when he had taken refuge from the pursuing enemy in a
ruined building. Having to stay there for hours, at the end of his
resources, ready to give way to despair, his attention was attracted
by an ant which was carrying something larger than itself up a high
wall. Noticing that it often let its burden drop, he began to count
the number of times that it began the ascent again, and he found that
sixty-nine times it failed, its burden falling to the ground. The
seventieth time was a success. "This sight," he said, "gave me courage
at the moment, and I have never forgotten the lesson it taught me."
Our own ants afford a marvellous study for those who can and will
give a little time to--as Solomon says--the considering of their
ways. Ants are said to stand higher than any other insects in
intelligence--so-called instinct. And insects in general have more of
this faculty developed in them than have any other creatures. They
are watchful, unwearying nurses; they take the eggs out on fine warm
days so as to warm and strengthen the coming ants, and they will wait,
to be cut in bits, rather than forsake their charge. When the eggs
are hatched, the nurses clean and brush their young, and even shampoo
the thin skin which cover their limbs, so that they can go free. Each
grown ant knows its own business and can, when necessary, fight its own
battles, and yet there is always a community; they have all things in
common and work for the general good. They are enduring, persevering,
faithful in friendships, and most industrious. One writer has said, in
describing an ant-hill, that whilst there was a twittering of birds,
and a buzz and hum of insect life around, the ants were all silent,
only "the sort of low hiss which arose from the collected workers,
resembled the noise of a London street more than any form of speech."
Their power of self-sacrifice is a marvellous fact. A man once saw a
line of ants, on travel, trying to pass a little rapid stream. They
hooked themselves on to each other so as to form a chain which was
carried in a slanting direction by the current to the opposite shore.
Many of this chain were drowned, dropping off in the forming process;
those in front were often baffled and overwhelmed in the rushing
current. At last the bridge was completed and the main body of the army
of ants marched across the stream in safety upon the massed bodies of
their self-sacrificing companions.
Milton has written of "the parsimonious emmet, provident of the
future...." "In small room, large heart enclosed." A writer has stated
that a son of Mr. Darwin dissected the head and brain of an ant, which
latter the great scientist declared to be "one of the most marvellous
atoms of matter in the world," more marvellous even than the brain of
man. Speaking of the brain of ants, Sir John Lubbock says, "The head
bears the principal organs of sense, and contains the brain, as the
anterior portion of the nervous system may fairly be called."
Forethought is at the root of all thrift, and thrift underlies all
civilisation as well as personal well-being. We seem at times, some
of us, rather to despise a saving disposition, as if this necessarily
implied meanness in its subject. Yet the greatest benefactors of our
race have been nearly all great savers at some period of their lives.
And there is little true generosity in the soul of the woman who spends
all she gets, even if her means go largely to others, if, through
failing to lay by something for a rainy day, during the winter of life
she is thrown on the charity of her fellows for her support. As someone
says, nothing should be left at loose ends. It is only the few who
become rich through large undertakings, the majority of mankind prosper
by means of carefulness and the practice of the details of thrift.
"Thrift is the best means of thriving."
Let us end this little study by reminding ourselves of that thoughtful
dictum of Ruskin's, "Economy, whether public or private, means the
wise management of labour ... first applying your labour rationally;
secondly, preserving its produce carefully; lastly, distributing its
produce seasonably."
(_To be continued._)
ABOUT PEGGY SAVILLE.
BY JESSIE MANSERGH (Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey), Author of "A Girl in
Springtime," "Sisters Three," etc.