PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 379 



that these roads of the hill-ants are sometimes a hundred feet in length, 

 and several inches wide ; and that they are not formed merely by the 

 tread of these creatures, but hollowed out by their labor.^ Virgil alludes 

 to their tracks in the following animated lines, which, though not altogether 

 correct, are very beautiful : — 



" So when the pismires, an industrious train, 

 Embodied rob some golden heap of grain, 

 Studious ere J^tormy winter frowns to lay 

 Safe in their darksome cells the treasured prey ; 

 In one long track the dusky legions lead 

 Their prize in triumph through the verdant mead; 

 Here, bending with the load, a panting throng 

 With force conjoin'd heave some huge grain along. 

 Some lash the stragglers to the task assign'd, 

 Some to their ranks the bands that lag behind : 

 They crowd the peopled path in thick array. 

 Glow at the work, and darken all the way." 



Bonnet, observing that ants always keep the same track both in going 

 from and returning to their nest, imagines that their paths are imbued 

 with the strong scent of the formic acid, which serves to direct them ; 

 but, as Huber remarks, though this may be of some use to them, their 

 other senses must be equally employed, since it is evident, when they 

 have made any discovery of agreeable food, that they possess the means 

 of directing their companions to it, though it is scarcely possible that the 

 path can have been sufficiently impregnated with the acid for them to 

 trace their way to it by scent. Indeed the recruiting system, described 

 above, proves that it requires some pains to instruct ants in the way from 

 an old to a new nest ; whereas, were they directed by scent, after a suffi- 

 cient number had passed to and fro to imbue the path with the acid, there 

 would be no occasion for further deportations.^ 



Though ants have no mechanical inventions to diminish the quantum 

 of labor, yet by numbers, strength, and perseverance they effect what at 

 first sight seems quite beyond their powers. Their strength is wonderful. 

 I once, as I formerly observed, saw two or three of them hauling along a 

 young snake not dead, which was of the thickness of a goose-quill. St. 

 Pierre relates, that he was highly amused with seeing a number of ants 

 carrying off a Patagonian centipede. They had seized it by all its legs, 

 and bore it along as workmen do a large piece of timber.^ The Mahome- 

 tans hold, as Thevenot relates, that one of the animals in Paradise is 

 Solomon's ant, which, when all creatures in obedience to him brought 

 him presents, dragged before him a locust, and was therefore preferred 

 before all others, because it had brought a creature so much bigger than 

 itself. They sometimes, indeed, aim at things beyond their strength ; but 

 if they make their attack, they pertinaciously persist in it though at the 

 expense of their lives. I have in my cabinet a specimen of Colliuris 

 longicoUis Latr., to one of the legs of which a small ant, scarcely a 

 thirtieth part of its bulk, is fixed by its jaws. It had probably the auda- 

 city to attack this giant, compared with itself, and obstinately refusing to 

 let go its hold was starved to death.* Professor Afzelius once related to 



1 Huber, 146. « CEicv de Bonnet, i. 535. Huber, 197. ^ yoiy. to Maurit. 71, 



•* I was much amused, when dining in the forest of Fontainebleau, by the pertinacity 



with which the hill-ant {F. rufa) attacked our food, hauling from our very plates, while we 



were eating, long strips of meat many times their own size. 



