field. First, going from house to house and asking civilly if they would save him all the old corks drawn from their bottles; and how many of those corks do you think he collected during the spare hours of ten years? One million, eight hundred ;—and then with these and his two knives, and without any assistance or drawings, with nothing but mere brain, he sculptured this beautiful model of the grand cathedral at Lincoln. Don't you think he was well repaid by being allowed to receive any subscription which visitors might choose to drop into his box to reward his perseverance, and may we not say exactly the same of him as was said of the founder of the building eight hundred years ago, "His mind exerted itself to excel and shine"?

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'Well," you will say,

"but what has all this to do with the discovery of Solomon's saying about the wisdom of the ant being superior to that of the bee ?" Much.

Don't you think of the two builders the agricultural labourer was the wiser? Without plans, or education, or implements, he carried out his model. What sketches, what tools, what material, what assistance the Norman architect employed!

Now we must compare the tools, first of the bee, then of the ant, and in order to do this effectually we must take down our miscroscope and examine these curious instruments with our own eyes.

First, the Bee. Of course you know what this wonderful little insect has to do: from the nectar, and pollen, and propolis of flowers and buds, it has to make pap for the baby-bees; bread of a peculiar kind for the royal family; ordinary bread for the workers; wax for the houses; varnish for the walls; poison for its enemies, besides other things, the raw material for which, collected from the flowers, is carefully transported in the pockets in its hindlegs.

But what is that complicated instrument we are looking

at through the magic tube of our instrument ? tongue.

The

You will easily understand that of all tools necessary for the curious work the honey bee has to perform, trowels and scissors would be the most appropriate.

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Why?"

Hind-legs of Bees, showing the opening of Bread-pockets.

Because it needs the first to spread the wax, as a plasterer uses a trowel to plaster a wall, and the second with which to divide the sheets of wax when the geometrical divisions are fixed, in order to fit into the most wonderful building in the world, the hexagonal cell with its six different sides.

Head and Tongue of the Common Honey Bee, drawn from nature: a, compound antennæ; b, mandibles, or larger jaws; c, lesser jaws, showing a combination of trowels and scissors; d, the brush with which pollen is collected; e, the 3,500 compound eyes; f, three simple eyes, supposed for shorter or nearer sight, as the former are for longer, or distant objects.

Then, again, the pollen from which much of its food is made, and with which the great business of its active life is occupied, namely the multiplication of variety and beauty in the world of flowers, needs a fairy-like brush with which it shall be delicately swept from the stamens on which it is so delicately suspended, like gold-dust; well, there they are, all combined in one complicated instrument.

This is the tongue of the honey bee, three instruments in one, and one in three. A trinity in Nature, you see; an illustration in the natural world of the saying of the apostle, "The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; and also to that other saying of one of poor Job's comforters, "The secrets of wisdom are double to that which is."

Thus we learn that natural facts are symbolic of spiritual truths; that the scenes of Nature are the pictures by which spiritual truth is taught in the grander revelation; and that, therefore, the best of all merely human "helps to reading the Bible" is the miscroscope, because it describes spiritual truths in sensible pictures.

But what evidence have we here, in passing, of design in this wonderful tongue of our friend!

And now let us change the picture. The object I now place on the stage of our instrument is the tongue of the common wood ant.

"How unlike the bee's tongue! Indeed it is. There is nothing in comparison.

First, how extremely small. We had to change our magnifying glass twice, you observed, before we could see it effectively. A power of four hundred times was sufficient to discover most of the wonders of the bee's tongue, but now we find one of thirty-eight thousand insufficient. The entire tongue, you see, is scarcely visible to the eye without the glass. Stretched out almost in the shape of a a lady's fan when opened, it is covered with an innumer

able number of teeth, and the edge shows them curved and bent over the sides, exactly like the rasping teeth in a carpenter's file.

"How many of the teeth are there?"

I cannot tell, nor count them. The ant is not the only

Head of Common Wood Ant: a, antennæ; b, tongue; c, greater mandibles or jaws; d, compound eyes; e, three simple eyes.

animal that has its teeth on its tongue. Amongst others I may remind you of the great black slug which is so fond of our garden plants; it has no fewer than 26,800 teeth, all on its tongue, and these are so hard, being formed of flint,