464 INSECTS. 



tions have passed away, become capable of acquiring new habits 

 and characters by the advantages of their condition. They are 

 enabled to procure auxiliaries, and they desist altogether from their 

 former labours. We see, in like manner, the instincts of these 

 auxiliaries reversed, by being brought up in the society of their na- 

 tural oppressors, and their animosities giving place to a state of the 

 most friendly alliance. 



The descriptions of these same animals in other climates, suffi- 

 ciently shew what formidable power they acquire when the efforts 

 of numbers are combined. Mr. Malouet mentions in his account 

 of his travels through the forests of Guyana, his arriving at a savan- 

 nah, extending in a level plain beyond the visible horizon, and in 

 which he beheld a structure that appeared to have been raised by 

 human industry. M. de Prefontaine, who accompanied him in the 

 expedition, informed him that it was an ant hill, which they could 

 not approach without danger of being devoured. They passed some 

 of the paths frequented by the labourers, which belonged to a very 

 large species of black ants. The nest they had constructed, which 

 had the form of a truncated pyramid, appeared to be from fifteen 

 to twenty feet in height, on a base of thirty or forty feet. He was 

 told that when the new settlers, in their attempts to clear the 

 country, happened to meet with any of these fortresses, they were 

 obliged to abandon the spot, unless they could muster sufficient 

 forces to lay regular siege to the enemy. This they did by digging 

 a circular trench all round the nest, and filling it with a large quan- 

 tity of dried wood, to the whole of which they set fire at the same 

 time, by lighting it in different parts all round the circumference. 

 While the entrenchments are blazing, the edifice may be destroyed 

 by firing at it with cannon ; and the ants being by this means dis- 

 persed, have no avenue for escape, except through the flames, in 

 which they perish. The narrations of Mr. Smeatbman, relative to 

 the white ant of Africa, are also calculated to raise our ideas of the 

 magnitude of these republics of insects, which must surpass the 

 largest empire in the numbers of their population. 



The superiority of the faculties of ants has been traced to the 

 strength of the social disposition which unites them. We might 

 perhaps venture a step farther, and point our several circumstances 

 in their physical condition, as the probable origin of this disposition 

 to associate together. These are to be found, first, in the delicacy 



