556 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I671', 



On reading these passages, I called to mind an experiment, which some years 

 since Mr. Samuel Fisher of Sheffield had made me acquainted with, viz. If . 

 you stir a heap of ants so as to rouse them, they will let fall on the instrument 

 you use a liquor, which if you presently smell to, will twinge the nose like 

 newly distilled spirit of vitriol. Considering this, and likewise that a few drops 

 of the oil or spirit of vitriol will soon turn the bluish syrup of violets into a 

 bright red ; and, as I am credibly informed, the juices and tinctures of any other 

 flowers or fruits of that or the like colour, I was easily induced to think, that 

 this juice of ants might be of the same nature with the oil of vitriol and other 

 acid spirits. And thereupon I inquired of Mr. Fisher, what trials he had made 

 of it, who returned me the following account. 



A weak spirit of ants will turn borage flowers red in an instant : Vinegar a 

 little heated will do the like. Ants distilled by themselves, or with water, yield 

 a spirit like spirit of vinegar, or rather like the spirit of viride seris. Lead put 

 into this spirit, or fair water, with the animals themselves being alive, makes a 

 good saccharum saturni: Iron put into the spirit, affords an astringent tincture, 

 and by repetition a crocus martis. Take saccharum saturni thus made, and 

 distil it, and it will afford the same acid spirit again, which the saccharum 

 saturni made with vinegar will not do, but returns an inflammable oil with 

 w^ater, and nothing that is acid. Saccharum saturni made with viride aeris, does 

 the same with that made with spirit of ants. 



When you put the animals into water, you must stir them to make them 

 angry, and then they will spirt out their acid juice. No animal that we ever 

 distilled, except this, yields an acid spirit, but constantly an urinous; and yet we 

 have distilled many, both flesh, fish, and insects. 



Extract of a Letter from Mr. Martin Lister,* Ja?i. 25, 1670-71, 

 relating partly to the same Argument with that of the former Letter, 

 and alluding to another Insect lihely to yield an Acid Liquor; and 

 partly to the Bleeding of the Sycamore. iV" 68, p. 2067 - 



Concerning the acid liquor of ants, I have very lately received from Mr. Ray 

 the account sent him from Mr. Fisher and Mr. Jessop; wherein these two 



* Martin Lister, an ingenious and learned physician, and one of tlie best naturalists of the 17th 

 century, was born in Buckinghamshire in l638, and is said to have been educated under his great 

 uncle Sir Martin Lister, Knt. physician in ordinary to Charles the First, and president of the College 

 of Physicians. He was afterwards sent to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took his first 

 degree in arts in l658. He proceeded to the degree of M. A. in l662, and applying himself closely 

 to physic, travelled into France in 1668, to improve himself farther in that faculty. Returning home. 



