THE UNIVERSAL FAMILY PAPER FOR INTER-COMMUNICATIONS ON 



NATURAL HISTORY-POPULAR SCIENCE — THINGS IN GENERAL. 



Conducted by WILLIAM KIBD, of Hammersmith,— 



Author op the Familiar and Popular Essays on "Natural History;" "British Song 

 Birds; " "Birds op Passage;" "Instinct and Reason;" "Tils Aviary," &c. 



"the OBJECT of our work is to make men WISER, without obliging them to turn over folios and 



QUARTOS.— TO FURNISH MATTER FOR THINKING AS WELL AS READING."— EVELYN. 



No. 30.— 1852. 



SATURDAY, JULY 24. 



Price 3d. 



Or, in Monthly Parts, Price Is. Id. 



WOXDEES OE THE INSECT WOULD. 



THE ANT.— No. I. 



We confess ourselves to be sadly 

 puzzled when examining the Insect World, 

 how we shall best select what will be for 

 the edification and amusement of our good 

 friends, the Public. Our stores are so inex- 

 haustible, that they may indeed be said to 

 be without limit. As however we hope our 

 Journal will live for ever, and ourselves 

 too (in a better world), we will steadily and 

 quietly commence with one of the smallest 

 of our industrious creatures, the Ant. Of 

 their labors, ingenuity, perseverance, good 

 temper, and foresight, we shall have much to 

 say hereafter. To-day, we will confine our- 

 selves mainly to a description of their " arts 

 of war ;" for they can fight, and do fight, 

 desperately. 



The close resemblance, if not indeed the 

 complete identity of many of the proceed- 

 ings of this singular insect community, to 

 those which human beings pursue under like 

 circumstances, cannot fail to strike the at- 

 tentive observer, and impress him with a 

 strong conviction of the goodness of the 

 Creator in meting out to every living thing 

 provisions abundantly suited to every neces- 

 sity of its being, and making the instincts 

 of the lowest in the scale of animated being 

 fully equivalent, according to their neces- 

 sities, to the abundant resources which 

 reason and experience supply to the rational 

 creation occupying the supreme place among 

 the inhabitants of our planet. 



The various communities of ants, which 

 live together in sociable union, and provide 

 during the summer the stores of winter, are 

 scarcely less interesting to the entomologist, 

 or the student of nature in general, than the 

 occupants of the bee hive; though, from 

 their stores being without value to man, 

 they have equally escaped the minute atten- 

 tion and the annual spoliation to which the 

 honey- makers have been subjected. Few, 



however, who have lived in the country, or 

 possessed a garden where the opportunities 

 of observation existed, have failed to notice 

 the industrious little natives of the ant-hill 

 plying their unwearied round of duties 

 throughout the summer. They also, how- 

 ever, like the natives of the hive, display 

 emotions akin to the passions that actuate 

 the human race, and engage in deadly warfare, 

 apparently with less reasonable justification 

 than is furnished for similar proceedings by 

 the bees. The wars of the ants have at- 

 tracted attention from a very early period, 

 and have been noticed by ancient writers, 

 not without some of the marvellous addi- 

 tions to which such were prone ; yet the 

 reality, when narrated by accurate observers, 

 with strict attention to truth, stands in need 

 of no additions to excite our liveliest interest. 

 The younger Huber, to whom we are indebt- 

 ed for many of the most remarkable disco- 

 veries relative to the habits of the bee, 

 observes, with reference to the wood -ant — 

 " If we are desirous of beholding regular 

 armies wage war in all its forms, we must 

 visit the forests in which the wood-ant (For- 

 mica rufa) establishes its dominion over 

 every insect within the neighborhood of the 

 colony. We shall there see populous and 

 rival cities, and regular military roads di- 

 verging from the ant-hill like so many rays 

 from a centre, frequented by an immense 

 number of combatants of the same specie s ; 

 for they are naturally enemies, and jealous 

 of any encroachment upon the territory 

 which surrounds their capital I have wit- 

 nessed in these forests, the inhabitants of 

 two large ant-hills engaged in spirited 

 combat ; two empires could not have 

 brought into the field a more numerous or 

 more determined body of combatants. The 

 rival cities were situated about a hundred 

 paces from each other, and alike in extent 

 of population ; what occasioned their dis- 

 cord 1 cannot pretend to say. 



" Let us figure to ourselves this prodi- 

 gious crowd of insects covering the ground 



Vol, II. 



