The Daintiness of Ants
BY HENRY C. McCOOK, D.D., Sc.D., LL.D.
IF there be truth in the old saying, cleanliness is next to godliness, insects are but one remove from piety. As tidy as an emmet—is more truthful than most proverbial comparisons. Who ever saw an untidy ant, or bee, or wasp? The writer has observed innumerable thousands of ants, has lived in his tent in the midst of their great communities, and watched them at all hours of day and night, under a great variety of conditions, natural and artificial, unfavorable to cleanliness, and has never seen one really unclean. Most of them are fossorial in habit, digging in the ground, within which they live; are covered with hair and bristles, to which dirt pellets easily cling; they move habitually in the midst of the muck and chippage and elemental offal of nature—yet they seem to take no stain and to keep none.
This is true of other insects. Take, for example, the interesting families of wasps. Many burrow in the earth to make breeding-cells for their young. Others, like the mud-daubers, collect mortar from mud-beds near brooks and pools to build their clay nurseries and storehouses. Some, like the yellow-jackets, live in caves which they excavate in the ground. They delve in the dirt; handle and mix and carry it; mould and spread it, moving to and fro all day long, and day after day, at work in surroundings that would befoul the most careful human worker—yet do not show the least trace of their occupation.
Of course there is much in temperament and training. There are women who remind us of insects in their faculty of moving unmarred amidst the current defilements of daily duty. They will pass to the parlor from kitchen, nursery, or sewing-room with no adjustment of toilet but a discarded apron or turned-down sleeves, yet quite sweet and presentable. But there are women, high and low, and men innumerable, of a different pattern. With insects, however, the type of dainty tidiness is the absolute rule. There are no exceptions; no degenerates of uncleanness, as with men. Temperament is wholly and always on the side of cleanliness; and training is not a factor therein, for it is inborn, and as strong in adolescents as in veterans. How has nature secured this admirable result?
If the reader were told that ants possess brushes, fine and coarse tooth combs, and other toilet articles quite after the pattern of our own, he would probably think he was being gulled. Yet it is even so. Let us take an inventory of these. To begin with, the body is covered more or less closely with fine pubescence, corresponding somewhat with the fur of beasts. This is interspersed with bristles and spines, which are sometimes jointed, and are so arranged as to aid materially in keeping the body clean. Particles of soil cling to this hairy covering, but it is a protective medium, holding the dirt aloof and isolated from the skin surfaces, so that it can be readily shaken off or taken off. The brushing, washing, and combing of this hairy coat constitute the insect's toilet-making.
One of the efficient toilet articles is the tongue. Around the sides of this organ curves a series of ridges covered with hemispherical bosses. The ridges are chitinous, and thus by greater hard- ness are fitted for the uses of a brush. When eating, this structure rasps off minute particles of solid foods, so fitting them for the stomach. Tor toilet uses it serves as both sponge and brush, and takes up bits of dirt not otherwise removed. In short, ants use their tongues as dogs and cats do, for lapping up food and licking clean the body. One is continually reminded, as he watches the tiny creatures at their toilet, of the actions of his cat and dog at the fireside.
The tibial comb or fore-spur is another
