100 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



piece of timber 11 . 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 pertinaciously persist 

 in it though at the expense of their lives. I have in my 

 cabinet a specimen of Colliuris longicollis, Latr., to one 

 of the legs of which a small ant, scarcely a thirtieth part 

 of its bulk, is fixed by its jaws. It had probably the 

 audacity to attack this giant, compared with itself, and 

 obstinately refusing to let go its hold was starved to death 5 . 

 Professor Afzelius once related to me some particulars 

 with respect to a species of ant in Sierra Leone, which 

 proves the same point. He says that they march in 

 columns that exceed all powers of numeration, and al- 

 ways pursue a straight course, from which nothing can 

 cause them to deviate : if they come to a house or other 

 building, they storm or undermine it ; if a river comes 

 across them, though millions perish in the attempt, they 

 endeavour to swim over it. 



This quality of perseverance in ants on one occasion 

 led to very important results, which affected a large por- 

 tion of this habitable globe ; for the celebrated conqueror 

 Timour, being once forced to take shelter from his ene- 

 mies in a ruined building, where he sat alone many 



a Voy. to Maurit. 71. 



h I was much amused, when dining in the forest of Fontainebleau, 

 by the pertinacity with which the hill-ant (F. rufa) attacked our 

 food, haling from our very plates, while we were eating, long strips 

 ofmeat many times their own size. 



