PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. D9 



of agreeable food, that tliey possess the means of di- 

 recting their companions to it, though it is scarcely 

 possible that the path can have been sufficiently impreg- 

 nated 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 sufficient number had passed 

 to and fro to imbue the path w ith the acid, there would 

 be no occasion for further deportations^. 



Though ants have no mechanical inventions to di- 

 minish the quantum of labour, yet by numbers, strength, 

 and perseverance they effisct what at first sight seems 

 quite beyond their powers. Their strength is wonder- 

 ful : I once, as I formerly observed, saw two or three of 

 them haling 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 car- 

 rying 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 Mahometans 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 pertina- 

 ciously persist in it though at the expense of their 

 lives. I have in my cabinet a specimen of Collmris 



' muv. de Bonnet, i. 535. Huber, 197. " A%)f . I. ^d Ed. ^ol. 



*= Voy. to Maurit. TJl. 



