In fact the host becomes parasitic upon the guest. But there are also a number of genuine parasites who are tolerated by their hosts. One of the most pleasing characteristics of ants is their cleanliness, and to this end they grow upon their bodies a brush and comb. But they can have their ablutions thoroughly attended to by certain parasites who like nothing better than to lick them for hours: hence we find a large species such as the Myrmica suffering the attentions of a small spieces, the Leptothorax, who ride about upon them and perpetually lick them receiving in turn abundance of food. The parasites by no means always belong to the species of ant. In all, three thousand species of insects are harboured by ants for reasons clear or obscure. The most familiar to us are the aphids, the leaf-hoppers, and other sap-sucking insects who are kept for the sweet secretions which they exude. In fact they are domesticated animals like cows, and the ants keep them apart in stables to promote regular milking. The secretions of the parasite-beetles, the Lomechusa, are particularly popular amongst ants, but we can hardly speak of these beetles in terms of cattle because their hosts regard the delicacy which they receive from them with such favour that they look after and bring up the beetle-grubs with greater care than their own offspring – even allowing them to eat the ant-grubs!
When we think of ants we generally visualize extreme order and efficiency, but the oddity of the parasitic intrusion undermines this idea. If we ourselves were to sit down to table with porcupines, alligators and lobsters, and to feed them at the expense of our own children; if we were indifferent to crickets nearly as large as ourselves; if our houses were inhabited, against our wills, by cockroaches the size of wolves, and flies the size of hens; if we fed monstrous animals with our babies because they exuded whisky, we could hardly stress the efficient ordering of our lives. Yet that is a fair comparison, according to Wheeler and Huxley, with the habits of ants. Moreover, there are many parasites who climb, creep, and intrude into the fold on false pretences, and by virtue of mimicry deceive their hosts with all the cunning of certified hysterical swindlers. These are often beetles who slip about undetected, ready to devour the helpless, to steal from the unwary, or to ride upon ants while sucking their blood. Some specialize in intercepting the morsel of food in its passage from one ant to another at the moment of regurgitation – a disappearing trick which bewilders the authors of this amiable practice. The highly individual tricks of the Clythra command our respect; this is a small beetle who builds itself into a little barrel of damp earth and walks about in this condition on its front legs. On the approach of an ant it stops and draws its legs under the barrel, thus presenting the ant with a convenient place in which to lay eggs: and when the eggs are deposited the little truck moves on, and the Clythra enjoys a good meal. More sinister is the species Phorid who attacks a big worker of the large Camponotus pennsylvanicus until it has succeeded in laying an egg in its neck between the head and the pronotum. This is the ant’s death sentence, because once the egg is laid the subsequent larva creeps right into the head where it devours the muscles and brain, the ant meanwhile wandering about in a state of increasing stupefaction until at last, becoming motionless, it hangs down its ever emptying head. When everything possible has been eaten in this interior the parasite cuts the last ligaments that join the head to the body of the ant, which then falls to the ground, thus providing a safe and comfortable cocoon in which the larva can turn into a nymph. Not less grim in execution and more extraordinary in result is the action of the female parasite aptly called Bothriomyrmex decapitans who having got into a formicary, seeks out the queen, considerably larger than herself, mounts upon her back and spends a few days sawing off her head: and no sooner has the head dropped than the parasite is adopted by the community she has invaded and whose queen she has murdered.
It will be observed from all the foregoing that appetite and great hunger are salient characteristics of ants. We have noted some of the ways by which they satisfy their desires. But they are highly ingenious creatures, and besides feeding upon nectar, meat, and eggs they send out foraging parties to carry in grain from the harvests of mankind. Their nests contain elaborate cellars and storerooms underground, rather like those familiar shelters of our own which we must now number as the fourth necessity of Man. Here they store up their wheat grains, keeping them so dry that they seldom germinate – for actual grain-growing does not enter into their economy. Then the corn-grinding ants, with the special jaws, get to work and mash up the grain to a paste which hardens into little loaves of bread. (Forel speaks of ant-butchers also who prepare joints.) So considerable is this agricultural activity, so far-reaching the carrying of harvests, that their granaries have become the cause of litigation amongst farmers, and the object of certain clauses in the Talmudic Rules of the Jews. Even so we can hardly call these harvesting ants actual agriculturalists; but it would be a most proper term to apply to the Attiine ants who grow vegetables and live on them entirely. They cultivate a species of fungus with such continuity that it has become extinct in the wild state no less than the grasses cultivated by mankind. These ants, who sometimes have nests the size of cottages, reserve deep galleries for their fungus gardens which they not only keep clear of any sort of weed by assiduous hoeing, but send out the workers who possess leaf-cutting mandibles to bring in leaves, which they then chew into a compost for the fungi, as if in conformity with the requirements of Sir Albert Howard. Elaborate columns of these leaf-clippers leave the formicary, ascend trees in a body, cut down the leaves, and return home with them. ‘It is an experience never to be forgotten,’ says Dr C P Haskins, ‘when, returning tired and hungry through the misty jungle at eventide, one first stumbles across the foraging columns of the parasol ants, their course marked by a line of waving banners, vivid green against the rain-soaked earth, as they return laden homeward.’
Thus the ants live. Thus they work and eat and fight and forage, sometimes unbending in relaxation to indulge in mimic warfare, gymnastic jousting, or caterpillar-riding. But for the most part there is little time for these relaxations, and they attend without pause at the great task of eating to live and bringing up their young. The workers are as tireless inside the nest as outside, carrying out, with unfailing obedience to the forces that govern them, the complicated business of midwifery when they liberate the nymphs from their silken shrouds and usher them into the world. These neutralized workers are wingless and work for the present; but new formicaries must be established, more eggs laid, and foundations placed for the continuance of their ancient line. This is the task of the males and females. At a given hour, in a given locality, when the temperature is just right, there is a great stir amongst all the nests of a locality. The ants assemble outside their nests, male, female, and workers. The males and females spread their wings in the midst of the now excited assembly of workers and fly away, and even as they fly they perform the act of fertilization, the females sometimes carrying upon their backs three or four males who in turn are granted their brief instant of pleasure which is also their sentence of death. Their work is done and they must die: and the real work of the female begins. She descends to the earth and there burrows or seeks out a hole which shall serve as the beginnings of a new nest. In the darkness of her chamber she takes off her wings and throws them down into the earth, and by the aid of her salivary ducts converts them into a fatty substance which alone serves as food for the nourishment of her first brood. She herself either eats nothing or eats some of her own eggs; then lays some more, then eats some more, then lays some more. If she belongs to the genus Atta she will carry with her on her nuptial flight, in a special pocket, the hyphae of the fungi to which she is accustomed. She will deposit them in her chamber when they will speedily flourish under her care, receiving manure in the form of larvae and wings, after which the mushrooms can be eaten by this queen and her daughters. And there we will leave her, brooding: a strange sight; nothing stranger than this in nature, a creature whose young are fed and whose fungi are nourished by virtue of her own b
ody and her own eggs – a little circle within the great Circle of Life.
When instructed, I still remove ant-hills, throwing them in pieces on to a cart, in order that men may have fields to themselves. But as I raise the spade in spoliation of their temples I must let my mind play with humility upon the scenes of these lowly children of the earth. For it is the destiny of man that he should seek to take upon himself the burden of understanding, and to move in the comprehension of his works and the consciousness of his crimes. I gaze down upon these ants. I have looked into their houses, and passed along their ways, and sat beside their cradles – and yet I destroy them still! I do not know how much I really care about them; and am I not also fatally bound and driven by the laws of life, my brain and my heart as yet but tiny lanterns in the windy darkness of the world?
I give them my attention. I pass in review the singularity of their works. I sing their long and venerable history and rehearse the resourcefulness of their economy no less than the architectural versatility of their designs; and I would apologize to them if I could. But what I cannot do is to join with Solomon and say – Go to the ant. That was an unfortunate remark. To compare men with ants, as if there was significance in the comparison, is ridiculous. In its context, Solomon’s remark may not have been so foolish as it sounds. Perhaps he was observing the tireless labouring of the harvesting ants over against the slackness of his own people, and in a moment of exuberance, said – Go to the ant, thou sluggard. After which, for generations to come, this supreme absurdity was canonized by the repetitions of unthinking publicists. For the wisdom of the wise is continually turned into the folly of the fool.
In saying this I would not wish it to be thought that all who have played with the idea are fools, least of all the great Forel, who, being very concerned about the League of Nations, could not refrain from using the ant to further that cause. But these loose comparisons will not do, and in the most recent book about ants (1946) they have reached an altitude of silliness beyond which other specialists will probably not easily ascend; a book wherein the regurgitation of ants is compared to an author writing books, their nests to the city of Athens, and the parasitic success of interlopers to the Chinese introduction of Buddhism among the people of Inner Mongolia. We may smile; but the general idea is equally absurd. There are similarities between the ways of ants and of men; comparisons can be made, but they should only be given a passing glance or as a joking reference.
There are many ants and there are many men – we can’t get much out of that, especially as there are thousands of species of ants and only one of men. Ants live together and so do men, but many other animals live in nests and flocks and family groups, while the tight societies of ants bear no resemblance to the vast interconnections of men. Ants go in for a species of agriculture – but how silly to make a serious comparison with men. Ants wage war; and there you can truly make your comparison – but what of it? We may note with interest that slavery turns out as badly for them as for us. They keep domestic animals but are not quite so much their slaves as we are to ours, calling some of our own species not men, but cow-men. My point is that we can make comparisons for fun, and make jokes about them if we choose, but that is all. We cannot learn from them, nor be forewarned by them. Our ways are not their ways, neither is our destination theirs. Between us and the animals there is a great gulf fixed. The most important thing about man is that he is not an animal. He is different, and in this difference lies his ultimate hope and promise. A miracle happened to man when he was an animal. That miracle was the birth of language. This has made his life incomparable with any animal. We are not concerned merely with the difference to him which this miraculous event has made in the ordering of his life. It is the difference in him that is crucial. For this was the sign of the birth of consciousness. Not of intelligence, but of consciousness. Something broke in on man. It may have evolved, but it is not strictly a question of evolution. It is something outside evolution. Something to which the animals are not evolving. Life goes on, evolution goes on, but never does there come a time when any animal attains the miracle of language (which is not the same as capacity to communicate). Animals can do all sorts of things and become subdued to us in a hundred ways, but this obstinate difference remains. It does not matter how ‘human’ a dog is, how much it feels or understands, how dear it is to us; dogs can go on changing and evolving, but never will there come a time when they will be spectators and attain consciousness and use the instrument of consciousness, speech: no matter how extraordinary may be the tricks of a dog, we can never convey a Thought, as a thought, to it, never see it evolve to the point of our being able to say – ‘I’ll be back on Sunday night.’ Consciousness is the miracle of man. That is his whole significance, and the meaning of his imperfection, and his promise. Because it has broken in, because he does possess it, then it will evolve in him as it has already done, it will go on evolving; this burden of apartness and semi-understanding which he often feels too heavy to bear, will be lifted; he will attain a higher state of consciousness and enter again into the unity that he has lost. He should not turn to the animals for directions. He should not go to the ant. He should fix his gaze steadily upon this human gift that makes him unique, and see in it, and the evolution of it, the key to all his set-backs and the meaning of all his suffering.
4 While Standing on a Dunghill
Good farmyard manure. I take large spadefuls of the stuff, like great slabs of chocolate cake, and throw them into a cart. As we open up the dunghill it begins to steam and its excellent odour becomes somewhat stronger. Various insects alight upon it. I cannot see the very small ones, of course, but would like to know the full insectitude activity. I observe one that always seems to be sharpening his forceps like a man in front of a joint – he of the brown wings. Also he of the beaked and vampire face. He of the dumb-bell body. He of the sleek and jet-black mail. I lift up their mountain of food into the cart, drive it off, and then throw it on the field. After which I climb on to another huge dunghill and fill up the cart again. And I must say I never felt better employed.
Not long ago the subject of manure and dunghills was regarded as low. There has been a great change. Today it is considered almost a test of man’s intelligence how much he appreciates manure. Throughout the land, people who formerly thought it only proper to show off their herbaceous borders now call on their neighbours to admire their compost heaps. A housewife gathering up the droppings from the milkman’s horse in the suburbs is a normal sight. Nearly everyone has already grasped that there is no such thing as rubbish. Some go as far as to declare, with Lord Northbourne, that a man who burns an old pair of trousers is committing murder.
Let me see if I can make farmyard manure slightly more intelligible to myself than hitherto. Where begin? It starts with the grass and the roots and the corn upon which stock feed. These things are burned in the furnaces of their stomachs. The ashes are passed out. Mixed with the straw of the stable they are piled up every day into a dunghill. As it stands it is no use. It would be strange if the grass having been eaten could then be immediately eaten again by grass. Yet this does occur after a time, and grass and other plants do eat this which has been already eaten. But it must first be treated. By whom? Not by man: he couldn’t manage it. By whole empires of creatures visible only to the microscope, called bacteria. Though small they belong to the organic world and have their own special problems, not least of which is vigilance against gigantic enemies, also invisible to us, called protozoa who gobble them up.
These bacteria, minute and unhonoured, labour ceaselessly for the good of all mankind. Or, rather, of all life upon the earth. For without them not only would the manure-heap never be usable as food, but the soil itself would fail to serve, its chemicals would not coordinate, and the great sun itself would administer its blows of light in vain. Let their labour cease and all vegetation would be choked and the earth would become a wilderness, ugly and silent.
In order to carry out their great
work they need above all things numbers; vast battalions of them must be on the job. Thus not the least interesting thing about them is their rate of birth. Within the compass of twenty-four hours one bacterium is capable of producing an offspring of one hundred and seventy thousand times as numerous as the present population of the world. They multiply by division, and that division occurring every half hour, a single individual can become within the course of one day the ancestor of 280,000,000,000 bacteria. This is an adequate rate of birth, and therefore when we say that empires of them get to work on manure heaps and in the soil, we are making an understatement.
And what are the offices they perform? I confine myself to their work on the manure. In an ounce of soil there may be about 150,000,000 bacteria, but in a similar amount of manure there may be about 30,000,000,000. Broadly their labour consists in breaking down complex substances and in building up inert constituents into energetic bodies. Farmyard manure consists of excreta, urine, and the litter of the stable. The first movement in the bacterial symphony is the destruction of the litter and its conversion into a dark brown moist substance, humus, which finally retains none of the structure of the original straw. The manure proper contains a great variety of carbon compounds, with also phosphates and potash, which can be summed up as nitrogenous material, the nitrogen of which is not yet in a position to serve as food. So the next task of the bacteria is to bestow such order as may be necessary to release the vital potentials.
The hill heats. It is burning. It is shrinking. Could we watch what is happening we would perceive the waxing and waning of different armies of bacteria, each handling the material in turn. The first army seizes upon the nitrogen, tears it from its complex grouping, and splits off ammonia from its protein. We cannot see this operation, but we can smell it all right. That is the work of the first army; they then hand their product over to a second corps which immediately sets to work to change the ammonia into nitrate. This done the division of labour continues and a third army takes control turning the article finally into the soluble form of calcium nitrate.
The Worm Forgives the Plough Page 26
