ANT. 



J27 



yet a foundation has been laid for an enlire new 

 swarm of bees, drones, queens, and altogether. As 

 the female ants are not understood to be individually 

 so fertile, there is no reason to suppose that their 

 aerial excursions are of longer duration. Hence, in 

 an ant country, the number in all the successions 

 must be absolutely countless ; and, as is the case 

 with bees, the males probably are manyfold more 

 numerous than the females. Clouds of males chiefly, 

 if not exclusively, have often been blown on the sur- 

 face of waters, to the shores of the sea, and into the 

 streets of cities, in some of which they have been so 

 numerous as that they might have been taken up in 

 handfuls ; and in some parts of this country, the roads 

 crossing the pine forests, which on particular soils are 

 favourite places for ants, are literally covered with 

 them. It should seem, however, that all which are 

 found thus have answered their purpose in nature, 

 and so it is of little consequence whether they fall 

 down and die in one place, or be wafted by the wind 

 to die in another. 



The females escape these casualties by their supe- 

 rior strength, and their descent to the ground ; after 

 which they remove their wings as quickly as possible, 

 and are then not very easily distinguishable by a 

 common observer from the ordinary labourers. 



The casting off of their wings is a grand era in the 

 lives of female ants ; for at that time each one seems 

 to be inspired with the ambition of founding a nation. 

 This erratic propensity causes the distribution of ants, 

 even those that are the most social, to be so very 

 general in places well adapted for them. It is not 

 many, however, at least not the majority, which are 

 able to carry this scheme of general ambition into 

 effect, for the workers are just as inhabitive as the 

 females are discursive ; and, as if they felt their bones 

 ache (or rather their muscles and skins, for they have 

 no bones) with the labour of building their existing 

 cities, towns, and palaces, they exert themselves to 

 the utmost in order to prevent these from becoming de- 

 solate through a failure of their progeny, which, though 

 they can tend with, the fondest and most solicitous 

 care, they can in no wise originate but by laying hold 

 of and detaining their fertile sisters. From very large 

 ant-hills the number of scouts sent out upon these 

 occasions is proportionally great, and so is the extent 

 of surface over which they range. Indeed the inha- 

 bitants of a very large ant-hill have, generally speak- 

 ing, to work much harder than those of a smaller 

 one, inasmuch as their larger supply of food must be 

 brought from a greater distance ; so that even among 

 ants there seems to be a practical inconvenience in 

 overgrown communities, and the labourers must toil 

 more severely both in finding their own food, and in 

 nursing and feeding the young, than when the com- 

 munity is of more reasonable size. 



The writer of this article has seen very large 

 deserted nests of the common wood ant, while there 

 were little hillocks all round, inhabited probably by 

 fragments of the erewhile mighty nation ; and the 

 scene had at least some resemblance to the Arab 

 building his hut or erecting his tent beside the mighty 

 remains of Thebes or of Tadmor : so pass the ancient 

 glories of ants as well as of men. In other somewhat 

 overgrown hills of the same species he has been able 

 to trace more great roads diverging from the hill in 

 all directions than diverge from London to the different 

 parts of England; and what is most remarkable for 

 travellers, individually so light,the roads, though across 



pretty sturdy short heather, were beautifully smoothed 

 and beaten. In the immediate vicinity of the hHl, 

 that is, for the first yard' or two, there appeared "to be 

 but little passage from one to the other, as if that 

 portion of the pastures had been but little worth 

 searching ; but as the distance increased, the roads 

 became gradually obliterated, as there the industrious 

 inhabitants seemed to begin seeking food for them- 

 selves and their young in real earnest. 



From the number of labourers which are on the 

 alert all day long about the time of the pairing, from 

 the comparatively little that there is then to perform 

 in the ant-hil!, as there are then no males or females to 

 feed, and the consequent probability that the workers, 

 having nothing to do but to find their own food, 

 enjoy their holidays, and rest in the fields whenever 

 they are weary, there is as wonderful a distribution 

 of them over all surfaces that can be considered ants' 

 pastures, as there is of females in the air; and though 

 it has sometimes been said that a female goes to 

 found a colony for herself, nobody has ventured to 

 set it down in print that they have seen the fact in 

 free nature with their own eyes, and indeed it is not 

 very probable, nor is it very clearly established, that 

 a female is capable of rearing and feeding her brood 

 without assistance, or even that she lives to do so. 

 Her grand work seems to be accomplished in the 

 laying of the eggs, and as individuals, proved to be 

 perfect females, have never been found assisting in 

 nursing in the larger societies, it is rather against the 

 analogy that, under other circumstances, they should 

 perform the whole of that labour. 



It is certain, however, that many females never 

 return to the society from which they departed, for 

 it is ascertained that wandering parties of the la- 

 bourers, and probably parties from different hills or 

 nests, finding situations fitted for their purpose, seize 

 these stray females and foun:l new colonies. 



When the females have got rid of their wings, and 

 have been conducted to an old hill, or had a new one 

 made fit for the purpose, they immediately begin to 

 deposit their eggs, which is done under ground, and 

 even the average number is not known ; indeed, at 

 this point the history begins to be very obscure, as 

 though the eggs can be found at all stages of their 

 growth, from the recent in which they are small 

 round white, and of a pearly lustre, up to that in 

 which the perfect animal is ready to be liberated 

 from its film, they are always under the immediate 

 and most solicitous care of the workers. 



These carefully regulate the depth in the earth, 

 degree of heat, moisture, and all other circumstances 

 necessary for hatching the eggs. As the process 

 goes on the eggs enlarge very considerably in size, 

 especially in length, and gradually become trans- 

 parent ; and when they have acquired their greatest 

 length, the larvae come out as grubs, which are of an 

 arched form, but incapable of performing any very 

 important functions, or even feeding themselves. 

 That is done by the all-attentive neuters, which, as 

 the larvae are much more delicate than the eggs, are 

 more solicitous in guarding them against extremes of 

 temperature ; and they feed them from their own 

 stomachs, but whether with their common food par- 

 tially digested, or with a peculiar fluid, has not been 

 clearly ascertained. At all events, though these un- 

 developed females are barren they are not dry 

 nurses. In this there is involved another argument 

 against the fertile female ever rearing a brood with- 



