100 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
pains to instruct ants in the way from an old to a new 
nest; whereas, were they directed by scent, after a sut~ 
ficient number had passed to and fro to imbue the path 
with the acid, there would be no occasion for further de- 
portations*. 
Though ants have no mechanical inventions to di- 
minish the quantum of labour, yet by numbers, strength, 
and perseverance they effect what at first sight seems 
quite beyond their powers. Their strength is wonder- 
ful: I once, as I formerly observed, saw two or three of 
them haling along a young snake not dead, which was 
of the thickness of a goose-quill®. St. Pierre relates, that 
he was highly amused with seeing a number of ants car- 
rying offa Patagonian centipede. ‘They had seized it 
by all its legs, and bore it along as workmen do a large 
piece of timber*. The Mahometans hold, as Thevenot 
relates, that one of the animals in Paradise is Solomon’s 
ant, which, when all creatures in obedience to him 
brought him presents, dragged before him a locust, and 
was therefore preferred before all others, because it had 
brought a creature so much bigger than itself. ‘They 
sometimes, indeed, aim at things beyond their strength; 
but if they make their attack, they pertinaciously persist 
in it though at the expense of their lives. I have in my 
cabinet a specimen of Colliuris longicollis, Latr., to one 
of the legs of which a small ant, scarcely a thirtieth part 
of its bulk, is fixed by its jaws. It had probably the 
audacity to attack this giant, compared with itself; and 
@ (uv. de Bonnet, i. 535, Huber, 197. ’Vot, I. 4th Ed, 255. 
£ Voy. to Maurit. 71. 
