FECUNDATION OF ANTS. 103 
When a large body of these insects 
were hovering immediately over my head, 
it would seem that I alone possessed the 
power of inducing them to change their . 
station, and of uniting them to others I 
the hulk of the Clorinde, my attention was drawn 
to the water by the first-lieutenant ( Haverfield) ob- 
serving there was something black floating down 
with the tide. On looking with a glass, I disco- 
vered they were insects. The boat was sent, and 
brought a bucket full of them on board; they 
proved to be a large species of ant, and extended 
from the upper part of Salt-pan reach, out towards 
the great Nore, a distance of five or six miles. The 
column appeared to be in breadth eight or ten feet, 
and in height about six inches, which, I suppose, 
must have been from their resting one upon another.’ 
These ants were winged. Whenge this immense co- 
lumn came was not ascertained. From the num- 
ber here agglomerated, one would think that all 
the ant-hills of Kent and Surrey could scarcely 
have furnished a sufficient number of males and fe- 
males to form it. When Colonel Sir Augustus 
Frazer, of the Horse Artillery, was surveying, on 
the 6th of October, 1813, the scene of the battle of 
the Pyrennees from the summit of the mountain 
called Pena de Aya, or Les quatre Couronnes, he 
and his friends were enveloped by a swarm of ants, 
sO numerous as entirely to intercept their view, so 
that they were glad to remove to another station, in 
order to get rid of them.”\— Introduction to Ento- 
mology, by Kirby and Spence, Vol. II. p.53.— T. 
F 4 
