xxxvm 
JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 
neither was he disposed to regard the statements of Virgil as those 
obtained by accurate observation. 
Mr. Hope, however, maintained the opposite opinion, and con- 
sidered the statements of Virgil and the old naturalists and poets 
ought to be taken in a strictly literal sense. 
Mr. J. C. Johnstone stated that in the West Indies he had ob- 
served the ants dragging along the dead bodies of cock-roaches, 
and that he had also found grains of Indian corn in their nests. 
He also noticed the communicative powers of these insects, a single 
individual giving information of any food deposited in the neigh- 
bourhood of the nest, to a very great number of the inhabitants of 
a nest., which immediately sallied forth to seize it. 
