PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 315 



History of Ants is likewise extremely valuable, not only as giving a sys- 

 tematic arrangement and descriptions of the species, but as concentrating 

 the accounts of preceding authors, and adding several interesting facts 

 ex proprio penu. The great historiographer of ants, however, is M. P. 

 Huber, who has lately published a most admirable and interesting work 

 upon them, in which he has far outstripped all his predecessors. Such 

 are the sources from which the following account of ants is principally 

 drawn, intermixed with which you will find some occasional observations 



ligent countryman Gould, I shall here give a short analysis of them ; from which it 

 will appear that he was one of their best, or rather their very best, historian, till 

 M. Huber's work came out. His Account of English Ants was published in 1747 ; 

 long before either Linne or De Geer had written upon the subject. 



I. Species. He describes five species of English'ants ; viz. 1. The hill-ant ( For- 

 mica rufa L.). 2. The jet ant (F. fuliginosa Latr.). 3. The red ant (Myrmica 

 rubra Latr., Formica Lin.). He observes, that this species alone is armed with a 

 sting ; whereas the others make a wound with their mandibles, and inject the 

 formic acid into it. 4. The common yellow ant (F.flava Latr.). And 5. The small 

 black ant (F.fusca L.). 



II. Egg. He observes that the eggs producing males and females are laid the 

 earliest, and are the largest : he seems, however, to have confounded the black 

 and brown eggs of Aphides with those of ants. 



III. Larva. These, when first hatched, he observes, are hairy, and continue in 

 the larva state twelve months or more. He, as well as De Geer, was aware that 

 the larvae of Myrmica rubra do not, as other ants do, spin a cocoon when they 

 assume the pupa. 



IV. Pupa. He found that female ants continue in this state about six weeks, 

 and males and neuters only a month. 



V. Imago. He knew perfectly the sexes, and was aware that females cast their 

 wings previously to their becoming mothers ; that at the time of their swarms large 

 numbers of both sexes become the prey of birds and fishes ; that the surviving 

 females, sometimes in numbers, go under-ground, particularly in mole-hills, and lay 

 eggs ; but he had not discovered that they then act the part of neuters in the care 

 of their progeny. He knew also, that when there was more than one queen in a 

 nest, the rivals lived in perfect harmony. 



With respect to the neuters, he had witnessed the homage they pay their queens 

 or fertile females continued even after their death; this homage he, however, 

 observes, which is noticed by no other author, appears often to be temporary and 

 local ceasing at certain times, and being renewed upon a change of residence. He 

 enlarges upon their exemplary care of the eggs, larvae, and pupae. He tells us that 

 the eggs, as soon as laid, are taken by the neuters and deposited in heaps, and that 

 the neuters brood them. He particularly notices their carrying them, with the 

 larvae and pupae, daily from the interior to the surface of the nest and back again, 

 according to the temperature ; and that they feed the larvae by disgorging the food 

 from their own stomach. He speaks also of their opening the cocoons when the 

 pupae are ready to assume the imago, and disengaging them from them. With 

 regard to their labours, he found that they work all night, except during violent 

 rains ; that their instinct varies as to the station of their nest ; that their masonry 

 is consolidated by no cement, but consists merely of mould ; that they form roads 

 and trackways to and from their nests ; that they carry each other in sport, and 

 sometimes lie heaped one on another in the sun. He suspects that they occasionally 

 emigrate ; he proves by a variety of experiments that they do not hoard up pro- 

 visions. He found they were often infested by a particular 'kind of Gordius: he 

 had noticed, also, that the neuters of F. rufa and flava (which escaped M. Huber, 

 though he observed it in Polyergus rufescens Latr.) are of two sizes, which the 

 writer of this note can confirm by producing specimens; and, lastly, with Swam- 

 merdam, he had recourse to artificial colonies, the better to enable him to examine 

 their proceedings, but not comparable to the ingenious apparatus of M. Huber. 



