12 HISTORY OF 



approach of its prey ; and if it comes in greater 

 quantities than is needful, yet still the little vora- 

 cious creature will quit the insect it has newly 

 killed, and leave it half eaten, to kill and attack 

 any other that happens to fall within the sphere 

 of its malignity. Though so voracious, it is sur- 

 prisingly patient of hunger, some of them having 

 been kept in a box with sand for six months and 

 upwards, without feeding at all. 



When the lion-ant attains a certain age, in 

 which it is to change into another form, it then 

 leaves off its usual rapacious habits, but keeps on 

 its industry. It no longer continues to make 

 pits, but furrows up the sand all round in an irre- 

 gular manner, testifying those workings and vio- 

 lent agitations which most insects exhibit previous 

 to their transformation. These animals are pro- 

 duced in autumn, and generally live a year, and 

 perhaps two, before they assume a winged form. 

 Certain it is, that they are found at the end of 

 winter of all sizes ; and it would seem that many 

 of the smaller kinds had not yet attained suffi- 

 cient maturity for transformation. Be this as it 

 may, when the time of change approaches, if the 

 insect finds its little cell convenient, it seeks no 

 other ; if it is obliged to remove, after furrowing 

 up the sand, it hides itself under it, horns and all. 

 It there spins a thread, in the manner of the spi- 

 der, which being made of a glutinous substance, 

 and being humid from the moisture of its body, 

 sticks to the little particles of sand among which 

 it is spun ; and in proportion as it is thus exclud- 

 ed, the insect rolls up its web, sand and all, into a 



