270 Short Communications I --^ 



be true, it is very interesting ; but, if it be false, it is very 

 wrong to put such books into the hands of children. I have 

 had as much to do with ants and ant-hills as most men ; and 

 never yet could find their winter store of provision, any more 

 than I could find honey in a wasp's nest. I have had men 

 [levelling down and] spreading ant-hills for days together, 

 and have offered them a quart of ale for a thimbleful of the 

 ants' winter food, of either wheat, rye, or oats ; but never 

 could attain my object, nor the men theirs. I have strewed 

 rice and wheat about an ant-hill, and seen them lugging it 

 away ; but I firmly believe the stupid creatures only mistook 

 it for their own eggs. The ants, like the wasp, and most 

 [many] other insects, live entirely upon fluids, or suction; 

 and lie quite dormant in the winter : their stomachs could no 

 more digest wheat or rye, than my stomach could digest horse- 

 nails. The wasp is seen to eat rotten wood, &c. ; but it is 

 only for the purpose of forming its comb-cells. The cater- 

 pillar and silkworm eat green food ; but this is only for the 

 purpose of preparing them for their change. The butterfly 

 and moth live only by suction. The ant is nothing more 

 than a biennial, or, at most, a triennial insect : when it comes 

 to perfection, it becomes a winged insect, propagates its spe- 

 cies, and then dies. What sorry naturalists must those, then, 

 be who hold up the ant as a pattern for improvident man ? 

 Truly, such writers should be looked upon by modern readers 

 as quite «w/iquated. 



They are still less acquainted with the history of the ant, 

 who say she " hath no guide, overseer, or ruler." I shall 

 never forget the first time I saw a nest of the large black ant ; 

 it was in a large forest in the south of England. I saw some- 

 thing alive lying right across my footpath : I took it for some 

 monstrous serpent ; but, on looking more attentively, I per- 

 ceived it to be a thoroughfare of black ants : it actually re- 

 sembled one of the crowded streets of London, I traced it 

 to both ends : the one terminated at a huge ant-hill, as large 

 as a heaped-up bushel ; the other end went up a huge oak 

 tree, and there dispersed all over the limbs, branches, and 

 twigs of the tree. Is it to be thought that they were " pre- 

 paring the acorns as food in the summer, to be gathered by 

 them as meat in the harvest?" Really, these large ants 

 might lug away small acorns, on level ground, as easily as the 

 small red ant could carry a large grain of wheat up a brick 

 wall two stories high. But, no ; they were merely sucking 

 the honey-dews, and excretions proceeding from smaller in- 

 sects. Neither would they all have kept one track if they had 

 not had a guide ; nor brought home their full bellies, if they 



