HYMENOPTERA — FORMICIDA. 221 
These insects have attracted the attention of the observers of 
Nature from the earliest time ; and their untiring exertions for the wel- 
fare of the community, their devotion to the young, and their care- 
fulness in the collection and storing up of various materials, have led 
to their being regarded as examples of surprising instinctive foresight : 
thus Virgil says — 

Xe parcum genus est, patiensque laboris 
Quesitique tenax et quod quesita reservet.” 
Solomon, however, more explicitly informs us of the reason for this 
solicitous accumulation; teaching at the same time a profound moral 
lesson: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways, and be 
wise ; which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat 
in the summer and gathereth her food in the harvest.” * (Proverbs vi. 
6, 7, 8.). By various commentators and naturalists, however, who 
considered this passage with reference only to the proceedings of our 
northern species of ants, (the males and females of which perish to- 
wards the end of the autumn, and the neuters remain in a torpid 
state through the winter,) it has been contended that there were no 
real grounds for considering that these insects do lay up food for 
consumption during the winter (the supposed grains of corn having 
been shown by Geuld to be the grain-like cocoons of the insect) ; 
whilst others have endeavoured to reconcile the statement with the 
habits of our indigenous species: thus Kirby and Spence (Jnérod. 
vol. il. p. 47.) contend that the words do not imply a storing up of 
food for future use, but merely that the ant gathers the food most 
suited for its use during the most ptentiful season. Latreille, on the 
other hand, considers that this foresight has for its object the aug- 
mentation and defence of the nest against the storms of winter, the 
stores consisting merely of building materials, and not of food. 
I would, however, adopt, in preference to either of these views, 
that previously given by the former authors; namely, that the observ- 
ation can only apply to the species of a warm climate, the habits of 
which are probably different from those of a cold one. St. Fargeau, 
indeed, states that in mild winters he had seen ants at large in every 
month ; and Colonel Sykes, in his history of Pheidole providens W. 
* This ancient opinion was supposed to be confirmed by the instinct asserted 
to be possessed by the insects of preventing the grain stored up from vege- 
tating, by depriving it of its coreulum ; but more careful observers discovered that 
the gnawing open of one end of the grain-like cocoon had been mistaken for the 
former operation. 
