Theater of Insects

...[they] mix their patrimonies at the same time,
Urging on the secret work and the black coals,
Who at last exhausted by losses, and broken by labor,
Find nothing, and continue to seek what they have found.

These triflers being passed over, if you wish to philosophize more deeply about insects, you will have what may exercise you in the Monarchical state of Bees, [and] the Democratic politeia government/polity of Ants, [and] the Economic providence of both kinds: Of the former in gathering and storing wax and honey; Of the latter in filling their cells, and gnawing seeds at that part where they germinate, lest the harvest collected with arduous labor and stored away for winter be corrupted by the force of internal heat—stirred up in the subterranean workshop (which is warm during the winter)—through attempted premature production, and once a plague has arisen, along with raging hunger, it destroys the whole flock. Nor will you walk with dry feet over the Architecture in fashioning the cells of honeycombs from wax, mathematically to an exact hexagōnon hexagon. In the compartments of the wasp-nest; In the various levels and winding Mazes of the ant-hill; In the structure of which, he who has spent long days in contemplating them—thinking it worth the effort to have spent his whole life in this laid-back and very leisurely business—has seen, and could not sufficiently admire or praise, the sleeping-quarters, granaries, hospices, and repositories for corpses, in addition to the countless gifts, functions, and works of these tireless little animals. The Seres Chinese will show the weaver, [as will] all caterpillars, [and] spiders, constructing traps for flies and stretching nets to obtain food. The Cossi wood-boring grubs practice carving, piercing wood with the chisel of their mouths. Ants and bees, among other insects, will teach piety toward the elderly, the weary, the sick, and their offspring: The love of offspring [is taught by] the Heliocantharus dung-beetle sacred to Apollo, which rolls a ball of dung (the receptacle of their own seed)