were prominently displayed at the late | stronger than their intellectual powers meeting of the Surrey Sessions, where Mr. should pursue this pleasant mental recreHardman and a full bench of magistrates ation-the evil they do is altogether behad to dispose of no less than eight cases yond their knowledge; they gratify their of professional street beggars, who were own feelings with the idea that they may indicted as incorrigible rogues and vaga- have relieved distress, and indulge in bonds. The evidence in the first case much smug self-sufficiency in congratulatshowed that a man, whose age was only ing themselves on the good they have thirty-one, had been convicted no less done. These promiscuous alms-givers than twenty-three times, so that a great would not hesitate to denounce the drunkpart of his life since his childhood must ard who, to gratify his desires, beggars have been passed in imprisonment. An- himself and starves his wife and family, other, who had moved in a respectable nor the idler, who prefers indolence and position, had taken to drink and followed poverty to industry and competence. beggary as the readiest means of procur- But they do not refrain from doing evil ing intoxicating liquors. The third, a for the gratification of their own feelings, violent ruffian, who had been previously convicted no less than nine times-who was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment and twenty-four strokes with a birch rod - received an intimation that on his next appearance at that court he would, if again convicted, be welcomed with a cat-o'-nine-tails. Another violent character, who had no less than twentythree convictions recorded against him, was sentenced to a similar punishment; and one who was not violent, but had been convicted thirty times during his thirty-six years of life, was allotted a similar term of imprisonment without the corporal punishment. The remaining prisoners, a man and his wife, were sentenced to six months' hard labor. If the inquiry is made as to the cause of this state of things, and the source to which we may trace the foundation and perpetuation of professional beggary, there can be but one answer. The vice, with all its hideous accompaniments, is dependent on the mistaken charity of silly, sentimental people, men and women alike, who gratify their own unreasoning impulses by giving away money in the streets. To relieve a really necessitous person is an action which gratifies certain moral instincts which are inherent in every human being; it gives a sense of personal satisfaction; there is a feeling in the breast of the donor that a good deed has been done, and a satisfactory self-complacency pervades the mind at having performed it. When such a desirable mental state can be procured at any time by the expenditure of a bronze coin or indulged in in excelsis for sixpence, it is not surprising that people whose moral sentiments are

and this under the false pretence that they are doing good. All persons who have taken the trouble to make the slightest inquiry into the subject know that the necessitous poor never beg; that the whole of the beggars of the metropolis and tramps of the country districts belong to a distinct class in great part an hereditary caste - which is supported by the maudlin sentimentality of those who encourage this vicious mode of life. By so doing they tend to perpetuate one of the most serious of the social evils which afflicts the nation. They foster and encourage the idle and dissolute class of vagrants who infest the country, and disseminate vice, disease, and moral as well as physical degradation amongst the population. By these beggars servants are often tempted to become pilferers of their employers' property; and the knowledge and practice of petty vice and practical dishonesty is carried into places where they were formerly unknown. If persons wish to gratify their charitable feelings, and they are really desirous of doing good and not evil, let them seek out the deserving poor; there is no lack of them to be found when sought. Or, should they be too much occupied with town life, and live too remote from the dwellings of the humbler classes, they can give their alms to the poor-boxes of the police magistrates, in the full confidence that they will be bestowed only on the most worthy objects. But let them abstain from pleasing themselves by giving money to sturdy beggars in the streets, which demoralizing practice is none the less injurious from being performed with the idea of doing good.

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From The Church Quarterly Review.

ANTS.*

tion contained in the first chapter of Genesis, nor to the important distinction there drawn between man and nature.

But that chapter must have exerted a most powerful influence upon the Jewish mind, for the simple reason that it placed the mind at the outset in the right attitude for the investigation of nature. It placed all nature before man as a system capable of being investigated, as an order of things distinct from, but subject to, the mind, as to be subdued by man, and consequently requiring in some degree to be understood. It is surely no visionary notion, but one of the plainest of truths, that familiarity with that authoritative record must have facilitated the advance of the Jewish intellect for some distance on the road of science.

FROM the earliest times of which any record remains, there have been some minds attracted by the mysteries of animal life. We cannot, of course, expect to find in the records of the remote past any traces of an intelligent investigation of the habits and the mental faculties of the subject creation. There is a general agreement as to the fact that in its early stage the human mind was incapable of any exact analysis of its own powers, or of the phenomena which it witnessed either in animate or inanimate nature. But it is natural to suppose that even in the pre-historic period man was struck by the resemblances as well as by the differences between himself and the lower animals. He felt, if he did not mentally grasp the fact, that emotions wondrously similar to his own – love, fear, joy, rage were exemplified in the living world around him; while the absence of any language common to himself and the lower animals served to wrap them in im-joyment of the leisure which attends prospenetrable mystery. That such was the case seems to be clearly proved by the important position occupied by various animals in some very ancient religions. We commend this topic to the consideration of any who be disposed to may derive all ancient religious ideas from solar phenomena.

It is interesting to observe that the earliest methodical investigation of nature, the earliest approach to a definite classification, appears to have been in Palestine. We are not now referring to the broad and general description of crea

* 1. Harvesting Ants and Trap-door Spiders. Notes and Observations on their Habits and Dwellings. By J. TREHERNE MOGGRIDGE, F.L.S. Lon

don, 1873.

2. Supplement to Harvesting Ants and Trap-door Spiders. By J. TREHERNE MOGGRIDGE, F.L.S., F.Z.S. With specific Description of the Spiders by the Rev. O. PICKARD-CAMBRIDGE. London, 1874.

3. An Introduction to Entomology, etc., etc. By WILLIAM KIRBY, M.A., F.R.S., F.L.S., and WILLIAM SPENCE, Esq., F.R.S., F.L.S. Seventh Edition.

London, 1856.

effect in this direction of that venerable We should not expect to see the full

record until the Hebrew nation, after its wanderings and its internal struggles, had finally settled down under a powerful and orderly government, and was in the en

perity and peace. It is, however, evident that the fruit of which that record was the germ did ripen when those favorable scientific writings have come down to us circumstances had arrived. Though no from the period, it is clear that science must have been one of the characteristics of a portion of the nation when at the and that classification was carried out to height of its power in Solomon's days,

a considerable extent. To record the dil

igence of that king himself as a student
of natural history was not deemed unwor.
thy even by the sacred historian, and we
may fairly infer that the royal author was
not alone in the study. Had he been so,
it would have profited no one that "he
spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is
in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that
Springeth out of the wall;" or that "he
spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of
creeping things, and of fishes."*
shall have to refer later on to one portion
of his natural-history teaching.

We

We do not deny that amongst other

4. Ants, Bees, and Wasps. A Record of Observations on the Habits of the Social Hymenoptera. By peoples a spirit of inquiry grew up in

Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, Bart., M.P., F.R.S., D.C.L.,
LL.D., President of the British Association, etc., etc.
Second Edition. London, 1882.

See Kings iv. 33.

course of time. It may indeed be inAgain, it was formerly supposed that ferred from the passage which has sug- instinct and reason are always in inverse gested these remarks that in some of the ratio to one another; that the more of neighboring nations it was so, and the free intelligence any species possessed library, consisting of inscribed tablets, the less was the amount, so to speak, collected by the Assyrian kings some or the number of its instincts, and vice three centuries after Solomon's time, and versa. This was a hasty inference from especially by Assur-bani-pal, contained, the fact that in man the power of inwe are told, "an interesting division stinct seems to be entirely dwarfed by formed by the works on natural history. intelligence. It is one of the features of These consisted of lists of animals, birds, intelligence as distinguished from instinct reptiles, trees, grasses, stones, etc., etc., ar- that it has to learn, and that it profits by ranged in classes, according to their char- experience; and we all know that no huacter and affinities as then understood." * man being can construct a habitation for Resisting the temptation to linger in himself without learning the way, an the vast field and amongst the embarras accomplishment which to many of the de richesses presented by the history of lower creatures comes by nature. But the study of nature, and coming to our the doctrine that reason and instinct are own times, we observe that the fascina- in inverse ratio certainly does not hold tion of that study appears to have reached good generally. Of insects, for example, its height. Every year brings out some fresh work, the result of patient observation, written in a more or less popular style, and detailing new and most interesting facts about plants or about animals. Such a supply implies the existence of a demand. It implies that there is a large number of readers who take a delight in knowing all that can be known about the animated world around them. It would seem as if men are beginning at last to follow literally the general direction to study creation implied in the words "Consider the lilies."

The late Mr. Darwin remarked as follows: "It is a significant fact, that the more the habits of any particular animal are studied by a naturalist, the more he attributes to reason and the less to unlearnt instincts." The truth which underlies these words appears to be that in almost if not all animals there is more play than used to be supposed of a faculty akin to human reason in its power of choice, in its varied action when circumstances vary; not that there is not also a large number of unlearnt instincts, such as that which guides the bird in nestbuilding or in periodical migration, and the bee in the construction of the honey comb.

* See Ancient History from the Monuments: Assyria. By the late George Smith, of the British Museum, London, p. 182.

t See The Descent of Man, 1871, vol. i., p. 46.

the social Hymenoptera, ants, bees, and wasps, are the highest in the scale of intelligence. Yet it is precisely these insects which possess the most wonderful instincts.*

The bees have long enjoyed a full share of attention, arising from the service which they render to man in collecting honey. The knowledge of the habits of ants is not so widely diffused; yet, as we shall endeavor to show, they are highly interesting in many ways. Moreover their habits admit of being studied with greater ease than those of bees.

Sir John Lubbock remarks that "there are a number of scattered stories about ants which are quite unworthy of credence." He has given us in a recently published volume an interesting résumé of facts about ants, many of them the results of his own patient and ingeniously directed observation. Before selecting and remarking upon some of these facts, as we propose to do, we will give two examples, the one of a marvellous story that falls under the category of those unworthy of credence, the other of a belief respecting ants, which, after being scouted by modern science as a popular delusion, has been reinstated in the full dignity of scientific truth by later observation.

* See The Descent of Man, vol. i., p. 37.
† Ants, Bees, and Wasps, preface.