268 Short Commimications : — 



each other ; but I did not at this time feel certain whether 

 in the feeling of love or of war, as the imperfect examin- 

 ation I then gave them, and the actions of the single ones, 

 left me undecided. The next day, however, cleared up the 

 question, by exhibiting numerous dead ants, of both the red 

 and dark kinds, on the site of the previous day's activity. I 

 picked up dead specimens, which I have since submitted to 

 Mr. Westwood ; who has kindly informed me that (as far as 

 it is determinable from bad specimens) " the red ones are of 

 Myrmica rubra, the dark ones of M. cae'spitum." — J. D, 



Instances of determined Resistance of Detention in the large 

 black Wood Afit, (VI. 287.) — A few days since, I caught 

 one, and held it by the legs [? leg], but so as not to hurt it. 

 After it had made various fruitless efforts to escape, it de- 

 liberately and without cessation began to bite off the leg 

 [? legs], which it did in about a minute. I caught another, 

 which was beginning to do the same thing ; but I let it (^o, — 

 H, B. Bids, Nov. 16. 1833. 



Ants and their carnivorous Habits, as noticed by Mr. West- 

 wood, in VI. 417. — In one of the volumes of Gill's Techni- 

 cological Repository (the number for June, p. 335, 336.), an 

 interesting account is given, by Mr. Carpenter, in amount as 

 follows : — In walking across a field, he observed the footpath 

 covered, for many yards in length, with the wing-cases of nu- 

 merous cockchafers, with a number of the heads of the insects 

 still alive, though separated from the rest of their bodies, and the 

 bodies of others actually crawling about without heads. The 

 cockchafers had been left in that state by the birds, who were 

 succeeded in the work of destruction by numerous small black 

 ants. These " had crawled up the sides of the chafers, and 

 had taken possession of the interior of their bodies, and were 

 devouring them alive. Many of the heads, I observed, were 

 also being carried away by the ants to their nests. If the 

 sense of feeling in these insects was as acute as in the higher 

 order of animals, the pain they endured must have been 

 dreadful. I had, indeed, before frequently seen an individual 

 of one species of insect making a meal from another species ; 

 but never before did I witness such a host of cannibals engaged 

 in their work of eating up, alive, insects that were actually 

 crawling away with their devourers within their bodies I " 

 Be it remembered, that the bodies of the cockchafers, although 

 not dead, had been mutilated and mangled by the birds. 

 The ants, like the dogs in the city of Constantinople, were 

 removing the animal remains, and, by so doing, pieventing 

 the contribution to miasma which the putrescence of them 

 might occasion. I have witnessed several ants engaged in 



