Ants in My Pints

Sir John Lubbock, 30 April 1834 – 28 May 1913

Back any KMSA Knight into a pub corner and get him to empty out his pockets, and odds are you will find, amongst the bottle tops and beer coasters, a few pieces of torn out newspaper
(knights are inveterate readers of newsprint ) where he has spotted an odd fact or news item, and torn it out of the publication, to use to his advantage at a later date.

And so it was that Hooky, over a foaming London Pub brew (actually it was his hotel bedroom, but we'll draw a veil over that) dug around in his pants pocket and handed me a warm scrap of newsprint, that when uncrumpled was titled;

'Weird fact of the Day'

Sir John Lubbock experimented on ants by getting them drunk. The 19th century biologist discovered sober ants would carry their drunken ant comrades back to the nest, if they were from the same colony - but they would throw drunk strangers into the ditch.

This sort of thing is like catnip to a KMSA Knight, dealing as it does with; Drink, Curiosity, Eccentricity, and generally the notion that there is nothing better or more important in life than to just get a bunch of ants drunk in the name of science.

My requested quest then was to find out more of this John Lubbock.

Well for a start it turns out he is an English Aristocrat; the 1st Baron Avebury, no less, and a real Sir as well, which puts our own self titled knighthoods to shame for a kickoff.

He also looks a great deal like a young Sir Bowie.

The rest of his resume, reads pretty much like you'd want your average KMSA knight to be; Banker, Politician, Biologist, Archaeologist and alround thinker and drinker. (okay so I put the last one in )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lubbock,_1st_Baron_Avebury

And so it was as an amateur biologist of some distinction, writing books on hymenoptera (Ants, Bees, and Wasps. A Record of Observations on the Habits of the Social Hymenoptera. in 1884.), on insect sense organs and development, on the intelligence of animals, and on other natural history topics, that Hooky's scrap of paper was drawn.



But it was to a little footnote to his life that I was drawn, as in its simplicity it summed up one of the main tenets of KMSA life, that of the Library or now-a-days the Internet, when he was cited as having written the quotation, "We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth". This variation appears in his book The Pleasures of Life: "Not only does a library contain "infinite riches in a little room," but we may sit at home and yet be in all quarters of the earth."

Quite So Sir John.

Sir Dayvd (the travelling Cyber-knight) of Old Oxford Town.