PAIRING OF ANTS. 



241 



A g-nat separated from the rest of its kind, and in- 

 closed in a glass vessel, with air sulucient to keep 

 it alive, shall produce young-, which also, when 

 separated from each other, shall be the parents of a 

 numerous prog-eny. Thus, down to five or six 

 generations, do these extraordUiary animals propa- 

 gate in the manner of vegetables*." It must have 

 been some dreamy recollection of what he had read 

 in Reaumur or Bonnet, whose works he elsewhere 

 quotes, that led Goldsmith into so palpable an error. 



r^. 



a, Aphis of the elm; h, aphis of the willow, greatly magnified ; c, common 

 gnat, (Culc.v pipiens), natural size. 



PAIRING OF ANTS. 



The multitudinous population which attracts the 

 attention of the common observer in an ant-hill is 

 not composed, in the usual meaning of the terms, 

 either of males or females, they being all incapable 

 of propagation. Their chief employment is, however, 

 the female duty of nursing the rising generation of 

 * Animated Nature, iv. 310, 



Y 



