ANT. 



125 



that a minute description of it is not necessary. 

 They belong to the order Hymcnoptcra, or that of 

 insects with four membranous wings, in which the 

 nervures or shafts are comparatively few and in- 

 conspicuous. They belong to that section of the 

 order which have no auger, an instrument for boring 

 holes in the bodies of animals or the substance of 

 vegetables, in order to place their eggs there for the 

 purpose of being hatched ; but the females of many 

 of the order have stings with which they inflict 

 poisoned wounds. The ants however have no stings, 

 but, at the place where the sting is usually situated 

 in others of the section, they have glands which 

 secrete a very pungent liquid ; and this liquid they 

 are sometimes supposed to insinuate into the wounds 

 which they make by biting with the jaws, thereby 

 causing a great increase of pain to the creatures 

 bitten. 



Cuvier forms the ants and some closely allied 

 species into a distinct family, under the very appro- 

 priate name of Hcterogynia, from the very peculiar 

 distinction of the sexes. Of these there may popu- 

 larly be said to be three : males, females, and unde- 

 veloped females ; that is, individuals which have, the 

 wings excepted, the external form of the perfect 

 females, but the sexual parts are merely rudimental, 

 and they have no sexual propensities. These last 

 greatly exceed the others in numbers and in activity ; 

 and, except in the analogous cases of the bees, and 

 some other insects which inhabit warm countries, 

 they form quite an anomaly in the history of nature. 

 It should seem that the lives of all those insects, 

 which have this threefold distribution of sexes, are 

 exceedingly laborious, more so perhaps than those 

 of any other living creatures ; and, as they are ex- 

 ceedingly numerous and have many enemies, they 

 multiply at a rate much greater than that of most 

 insects. Their young are also reared with more care, 

 and their social habits, their diligence, their ingenuity 

 and their courtesy to each other are quite exemplary. 

 The eggs of most insects are left to nature ; they are 

 deposited in or upon substances which shall afford 

 nourishment to the young as soon as they are hatched, 

 and thus they are left to find their way to the last or 

 perfect stage of their existence as they best can ; 

 their parents being in general previously dead, the 

 father before the eggs are deposited, and the mother 

 very soon after. All those insects, which are thus 

 reared without attention, grow up to be perfect males 

 and females when in their last stage, though they 

 have no sexual distinction or propensity in the pre- 

 vious ones ; and the grand work, in the case of many 

 at least, in this last stage, is to secure a generation 

 of successors and then to die ; and the life which is 

 devoted to this single purpose is often only a few 

 hours, and sometimes only a few minutes in duration. 

 Of these insects, many are often exceedingly la- 

 borious, and curious in their labours, when in the 

 grub or larva state ; but among the ants and the 

 other species which, like them, have the greater 

 number consisting of undeveloped females, no labour, 

 excepting perhaps that of spinning a cocoon in which 

 to pass the chrysoloid state, is performed till they ar- 

 rive at the last and perfect stage. But it is curious to 

 notice that the analogy of insect life is so far kept up 

 as that the ones which have a perfect sexual develop- 

 ment are exempted from almost all labour in these, 

 excepting such labour as is connected with the per- 

 fecting and depositing the eggs, the subsequent rear- 



ing of which devolves chiefly upon the undeveloped 

 females. 



There are some indeterminate points in the na- 

 tural history of ants, which throw doubt and per- 

 plexity upon the whole of it ; and though there is 

 certainly no inconsiderable degree of analogy be- 

 tween ants and bees, of which the history is more 

 complete, yet the analogy is of that loose and im- 

 perfect character which is very apt to mislead. In 

 the more social bees it is doubtful whether there is 

 even, for any length of time at least, more than one 

 perfect female, except young ones, which are rearing 

 a succession. In large communities of ants there are 

 many such females, and it does not appear that they 

 evince towards each other the same deadly hostility 

 which is shown by the female bees. In both races, 

 the pairing appears to take place external of the nest 

 or habitation, and probably only in the atmosphere 

 on the wing. When the eggs oNaoth are deposited, 

 they are to appearance all exactly alike, whatever is 

 to be the character of the beings produced from them ; 

 and it is here that the analogy becomes imperfect, 

 and the natural history of the ants obscure. It is 

 tolerably well ascertained that in bees, at least in the 

 common hive bees, the undeveloped females, or the 

 neuters, or workers, or nurses as they are sometimes 

 called, have the means of determining what sort of 

 progeny shall issue from the eggs ; and that, by 

 placing an egg of the very same description in three 

 different magnitudes of cells, and feeding and attend- 

 ing it in different ways, they can make it a common 

 worker, a male, or a female (or queen, as the perfect 

 females are styled) just as they see occasion. We 

 know nothing of the principle which leads them to 

 do the one or the other ; and therefore we say that 

 it is the result of instinct, a name which comes in 

 very conveniently to conceal our ignorance in all 

 cases where, in truth, we know nothing about the 

 matter. By means of this instinct, however, it is 

 evident that a community of bees, whether great or 

 small, can so regulate the numbers of its three classes 

 of members, as that they shall always be in that pro- 

 portion to each other, which is most conducive to the 

 present welfare and the 'succession and continuation 

 of the race. See BEE. 



It is here that our knowledge of the ants is defi- 

 cient, and hence the whole of the natural history is 

 broken and imperfect ; for the natural history of any 

 animal resembles a machine in this, that the whole of 

 its parts, taken together, are no better than the most 

 imperfect of them taken singly. The neuter, or 

 nursing ants, certainly do pay a great deal of atten- 

 tion to the young, up to the period of their escape 

 from their cocoons or pupa cases, after which they 

 are able to shift for themselves as independent mem- 

 bers of the community. They expose them to cer- 

 tain genial degrees of temperature, generally in the 

 mornings ; they remove them from the strong action 

 both of heat and of light ; they remove them from the 

 influence of damp and rain ; and they feed them 

 when in the larva state. But it has not been ascer- 

 tained that the difference of sex, or of development 

 of sex, depends upon any specific treatment which the 

 young receive in any one of these stages ; and this 

 is the grand blank, the filling up of which is necessary, 

 not only to complete the natural history of ants, but 

 to make it rational and philosophic so far as it goes. 

 Analogy would lead us to suppose that the neuter or 

 working ants, on which the burden of the community, 



