314 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



of provisions may be necessary for them. 1 Even in northern climates, 

 against wet seasons, they may provide in this way for their sustenance 

 and that of the young brood, which, as Mr. Smeathman observes, are very 

 voracious, and cannot bear to be long deprived of their food j else why do 

 ants carry worms, living insects, and many other such things into their 

 nests ? Solomon's lesson to the sluggard has been generally adduced as a 

 strong confirmation of the ancient opinion : it can, however, only relate to 

 the species of a warm climate, the habits of which, as I have just observed, 

 are probably different from those of a cold one ; so that his words, as 

 commonly interpreted, may be perfectly correct and consistent with nature, 

 and yet be not at all applicable to the species that are indigenous to Europe. 

 But I think, if Solomon's words are properly considered, it will be found 

 that this interpretation has been fathered upon them, rather than fairly 

 deduced from them. He does not affirm that the ant, which he proposes 

 to his sluggard as an example, laid up in her magazines stores of grain : 

 "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise; which, 

 having neither captain, overseer, nor ruler, prepares her bread in the 

 summer, and gathers her food in the harvest." These words may very 

 well be interpreted simply to mean, that the ant, with commendable pru- 

 dence and foresight, makes use of the proper seasons to collect a supply 

 of provision sufficient for her purposes. There is not a word in them im- 

 plying that she stores up grain or other provision. She prepares her 

 bread and gathers her food, namely, such food as is suited to her, in 

 summer and harvest, that is, when it is most plentiful, and thus shows 

 her wisdom and prudence by using the advantages offered to her. The 

 words thus interpreted, which they may be without any violence, will 

 apply to our European species as well as to those that are not indi- 

 genous. 



I shall now bid farewell to the ancients, and proceed to lay before you 

 what the observations of modern authors have enabled me to add to the 

 history of ants: the principal of these are Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam 

 (who was the first that had recourse to artificial means for observing 

 their proceedings), Linne, Bonnet, and especially the illustrious Swedish 

 entomologist, De Geer. Gould, also, who, though no systematical natu- 

 ralist, was a man of sense and observation, has thrown great light upon 

 the history of ants, and anticipated several of what are accounted the dis- 

 coveries of more modern writers on this subject. 2 Latreille's Natural 



1 This supposition has heen verified by Col. Sykes's discovery at Poona in India 

 of a species of ants (Atta providens Sykes), which store up the seeds of a kind of 

 grass (Panicum) at the period of their being ripe in January and February, and 

 which he saw them in June and October bringing up and exposing on the outside 

 of their nests to the sun in heaps as big as a handful, apparently for the purpose of 

 drying them after being wetted by the rains of the monsoon. {Trans. Ent. Soc. 

 Lond. i. 103.) It does not seem easy to assign any plausible reason for the original 

 collecting and storing, and subsequent drying and airing of these seeds, except on 

 the supposition of their being intended in some way for food ; and though we have 

 no previously recorded instance of ants feeding on any other vegetable substance 

 than such as are saccharine, yet, as all our experience proves how constant!}' in 

 entomology exceptions are occurring to supposed general laws, there seems good 

 reason to believe that this is one of them. (See the Rev. F. W. Hope's remarks on. 

 this subject in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. 211.) 



2 M. P. Huber, in the account which, in imitation of De Geer, he has given of 

 the discoveries made by his predecessors in the history of ants, having passed with- 

 out notice, probably ignorant of the existence of such a writer, those of our intel- 



