Then Solomon transplanted it elsewhere; and if it were a tree with medicinal properties, he wrote in books the kinds of remedies for which it served. One day Solomon saw in his garden a new tree, and he asked it, “What is thy name, and what purpose dost thou serve?” The tree replied, “I serve for the destruction of the temple. Make of me a staff, whereon to lean.” Solomon said, “None can destroy the temple as long as I am alive.” Then he understood that the tree warned him that he must shortly die. He pulled up the tree, and of it he made a staff, and, when he prayed, he leaned on this staff to keep himself upright. Solomon knew that the temple was not completed, and that if he died, and the Jinns knew of it, they would leave off building; therefore he prayed, “O Lord! grant that the event of my death may be hidden from the Jinns, that they may finish this temple.” God heard his prayer, that the temple might be completed, and that the Jinns might be humbled. Solomon died in the temple, standing, leaning on his staff, with his head bowed in adoration. And his soul was taken so gently from him by the Angel of Death, that the body remained standing; and so it remained for a whole year, and those who saw him thought he was absorbed in prayer, and they ventured not to approach. The Jinns worked night and day till the temple was finished. Now, God had ordered, the same day that the soul left Solomon, a little white ant, which devours wood, to come up out of the earth under the staff, and to gnaw the inside of the staff. She ate a little every day; and as the staff was very strong and stout, she had not finished it till the end of the year. Then, when the temple was finished, at the same time the staff was eaten up, and it crumbled under the weight of Solomon, and the body fell. Thus the Jinns knew that Solomon was dead. Now, wherever the white ant eats wood, the void is filled up with clay and water by the Jinns; and this they will continue to do till the day of the Resurrection, in gratitude to the little ant which announced to them the death of him who held them in bondage. If the clay and the water are not inserted by the Jinns, whence can they come? The sages assembled and enclosed an ant in a box, with a piece of wood, for a night and a day; then they compared the amount devoured in that time with the length of the staff, and thus they ascertained how long a time Solomon had been dead.[685] Footnote 658: Solomon was twelve years old when he succeeded David. (Abulfeda, p. 43; Bartolocci, iv. p. 371.) Footnote 659: Weil, pp. 225-231; Eisenmenger, p. 440, &c. Footnote 660: Weil, pp. 231-4. Footnote 661: The story of the building of the temple, with the assistance of Schamir, has been already related by me in my “Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.” Footnote 662: