PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 315 
History of Ants is likewise extremely valuable, not only as giving a sys- 
tematic arrangement and descriptions’ of the species, but as concentrating 
the accounts of preceding authors, and adding several interesting facts 
ev proprio penu. The great historiographer of ants, however, is M. P. 
Huber, who has lately published a most admirable and interesting work 
upon them, in which he has far outstripped all his predecessors. Such 
are the sources from which the following’ account of ants is principally 
drawn, intermixed with which you will find some occasional observations 
ligent countryman Gould, I shall here give a short analysis of them; from which it 
will appear that he was one of their best, or rather their very best, historian, till 
M. Huber’s work came out. His Account of Lnglish Ants was published in 1747; 
long before either Linné or De Geer had written upon the subject. 
J. Speries. He describes five species of English ants; viz. 1. The hill-ant (Fer- 
mica rufa Ii), 2. The jet ant (&. fuliginosa Latr.). 3. The red ant (Myrmica 
rubra Latr., Formica Lin.). He observes, that this species alone is armed with a 
sting ; whereas the others make a wound with their mandibles, and inject the 
formic acid into it. 4, The common yellow ant (F. flava Latr.). And 5, The small 
black ant (77. fusca L.). 
II. Lg. We observes that the eggs producing males and females are laid the 
earliest, and are the largest: —he seems, however, to have confounded the black 
and brown eggs of Aphides with those of ants. 
II. Larva. These, when first hatched, he observes, are hairy, and continue in 
the larva state twelve months or more. He, as well as De Geer, was aware that 
the larvee of Myrmica rubra do not, as other ants do, spin a cocoon when they 
assume the pupa. 
IV. Pupa. He found that female ants continue in this state about six weeks, 
and males and neuters only a month. 
Y. Imago. We knew perfectly the sexes, and was aware that females cast their 
wings previously fo their becoming mothers; that at the time of their swarms large 
numbers of both sexes become the prey of birds and fishes; that the surviving 
females, sometimes in numbers, go under-ground, particularly in mole-hills, and lay 
eggs; but he had not discovered that they then act the part of neuters im the care 
of their progeny. He knew also, that when there was more than one queen in a 
nest, the rivals lived in perfect harmony. 
With respect to the neuters, he had witnessed the homage they pay their queens 
or fertile females continued even after their death;—this homage he, however, 
observes, which is noticed by no other author, appears often to be temporary and 
local—ceasing at certain times, and being renewed upon a change of residence. He 
enlarges upon their exemplary care of the eggs, larve, and pup». He tells us that 
the eggs, as soon as laid, are taken by the neuters and deposited in heaps, and that 
the neuters brood them, He particularly notices their carrying them, with the 
larve and pup, daily from the interior to the surface of the nest and back again, 
according to the temperature; and that they feed the larve by disgorging the food 
from their own stomach. He speaks also of their opening the cocoons when the 
pup® are ready to assume the imago, and disengaging them from them. With 
Tegard to their labours, he found that they work all night, except during violent 
rains; that their instinct varies as to the station of their nest; that their masonry 
18 consolidated by no cement, but consists merely of mould ; that they form roads 
and trackways to and from their nests ; that they carry each other in sport, and 
Sometimes lie heaped one on another in the sun. He suspects that they occasionally 
emigrate; —he proves by a variety of experiments that they do not hoard up pro- 
visions. He found they were often infested by a particular kind of Gordius:— he 
had noticed, also, that the neuters of 7 rufa and flava (which escaped M. Huber, 
though he observed it in Polyergus rufescens Latr.) are of two sizes, which the 
Writer of this note can confirm by producing specimens ;—and, lastly, with Swam- 
merdam, he had recourse to artificial colonies, the better to enable him to examine 
their proceedings, but not comparable to the ingenious apparatus of M. Huber. 
