344 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



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 arraj', 

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



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

 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, thougli 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 suf- 

 ficient 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 

 labour, yet by numbers, strength, and perseverance the}' 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 haling along a 

 young snake not dead, which was of the tliickness 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 Ma- 

 hometans 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 longi- 

 col/is 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 audacity to 

 attack this giant, compared with itself, and, olistinately refusing to let go 

 its hold, was starved to death.^ Professor Afzelius once related to me 

 some particulars with respect to a spfties of ant in Sierra Leone, which 

 proves the same point. He says that they march in columns that exceed 

 all powers of numeration, and always pursue a straight course, from which 

 nothing can cause them to deviate : if they come to a house or other 

 building, they storm or undermine it ; if a river comes across them, though 

 millions perish in the attentpt, they endeavour to swim over it. 



This quality of perseverance in ants on one occasion led to very im- 

 portant results, which affected a large portion of this habitable globe ; 

 for the celebrated conqueror Timour, being once forced to take shelter 

 from his enemies in a ruined building, where he sat alone many hours, 



' CEziv. de Bonnet, i. 535. Huber, 197. 



2 V^oy. to Maurlt. 71. 



3 I was much amused, when dining in the forest of Fontainebleau, by the perti- 

 nacity with which the hill-ant (if'', riifa) attaclted our food, lialing from our very 

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



