122 WARS OF ANTS. 



natures is not, we confess, exactly true; but the following 

 notes, drawn chiefly from Huber, the veracious chronicler of 

 the Ant nations, will show that our fiction treads very closely 

 on the heels of fact. 



The wars of Ants were observed long ago, and one of their 

 battles, fought under the pontificate of Eugenius IY., was 

 honoured by having for its historian ^Eneas Sylvius, who was 

 afterwards Pope himself, as Pius II. The most warlike of the 

 Ant tribes, according to Huber, is the "Wood-ant, the largest 

 British species, of which we have elsewhere told a tale with 

 relation to other than its military characteristics.* These, as 

 well as its domestic doings, are delightfully described by the 

 above writer, and a walk to some neighbouring wood is almost 

 sure to afford personal acquaintance with these sylvan warriors 

 with their corselets of rusty red, and black head and tail pieces. 

 There also we may see 'their "fortified cities," their "military 

 roads," diverging from these " citadels" like so many rays 

 from a centre ; their regular battles with the same or a weaker 

 species ; their skirmishes, their single combats, their ambus- 

 cades, their barricades, and all the pomp and circumstance 

 of Formican warfare. But though it was known centuries 

 ago, that Ants made war, it was not discovered till of late 

 years, and that by Huber himself, that they also made slaves, 

 seizing them while in their infancy (their state of larva or of 

 pupa) to be trained up for their service, by compatriot slaves 

 already grown up in the same. 



* Supra, p. 74. 



