Children should be encouraged to watch, patiently and quietly, until they learn something of the habits and history of bee, ant, wasp, spider, hairy caterpillar, dragonfly, and whatever of larger growth comes in their way. ‘The creatures never have any habits while I am looking!’ a little girl in some story-book is made to complain: but that was her fault; the bright keen eyes with which children are blest were made to see, and see into, the doings of creatures too small for the unaided observation of older people. Ants may be brought under home observation in the following way :- Get two pieces of glass 1 foot square, three strips of glass 11½ inches long and one strip 11 inches long, these all ¼ inch wide. The glass must be carefully cut so as to fit exactly. Place the four strips of glass upon one of the sheets of glass and fix in an exact square, leaving a ½ inch opening, with seccotine or any good fixer. Get from an ant-hill about twelve ants (the yellow ants are the best, as the red are inclined to be quarrelsome), a few eggs, and one queen. The queen will be quite twice as large as an ordinary ant, and so can be easily seen. Take some of the earth of the ant-hill. Put the earth with your ants and eggs upon the sheet of glass and fix the other sheet above, leaving only the small hole in one corner, made by the shorter strip, which should be stopped with a bit of cotton-wool. The ants will be restless for perhaps forty-eight hours, but will then begin to settle and arrange the earth. Remove the wool plug once a week, and replace it after putting two or three drops of honey on it. Once in three weeks remove the plug to drop in with a syringe about ten drops of water. This will not be necessary in the winter while the ants are asleep. This ‘nest’ will last for years.*
With regard to the horror which some children show of beetle, spider, worm, that is usually a trick picked up from grown-up people. Kingsley’s children would run after their ‘daddy’ with a ‘delicious worm,’ a ‘lovely toad,’ a ‘sweet beetle’ carried tenderly in both hands. There are real antipathies not to be overcome, such as Kingsley’s own horror of a spider; but children who are accustomed to hold and admire caterpillars and beetles from their babyhood will not give way to affected horrors. The child who spends an hour in watching the ways of some new ‘grub’ he has come upon will be a man of mark yet. Let all he finds out about it be entered in his diary – by his mother, if writing be a labour to him, — where he finds it, what it is doing, or seems to him to be doing; its colour, shape, legs: some day he will come across the name of the creature, and will recognize the description of an old friend.
* While you could certainly make your own ant farm there are many available to purchase.