344 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS, 
Some lash the stragglers to the task assign’d, 
Some to their ranks the bands that lag behind: 
They crowd the peopled path in thick array, 
Glow at the work, and darken all the way.” 
Bonnet, observing that ants always keep the same track both in going 
from and returning to their nest, imagines that their paths are imbued 
with the strong scent of the formic acid, which serves to direct them ; 
but, as Huber remarks, though this may be of some use to them, thei 
other senses must be equally employed, since it is evident, when they 
have made any discovery of agreeable food, that they possess the means 
of directing their companions to it, though it is scarcely possible that 
the path can have been sufficiently impregnated with the acid for them 
to trace their way to it by scent. Indeed the recruiting system, described 
above, proves that it requires some pains to instruct ants in the way from 
an old to a new nest; whereas, were they directed by scent, after a suf- 
ficient number had passed to and fro to imbue the path with the acid, 
there would be no occasion for further deportations. 
Though ants have no mechanical inventions to diminish the quantum of 
labour, yet by numbers, strength, and perseverance they effect what at 
first sight seems quite beyond their powers. Their strength is wonderful. 
T 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 
carrying off a Patagonian centipede. They had seized it by all its legs, 
and bore it along as workmen do a large piece of timber.2 The Ma- 
hometans hold, as Theyenot 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 longi- 
collis Latr., to one of the legs of which a small ant, scarcely a thirtieth 
part of its bulk, is fixed by its jaws. Ithad probably the audacity to 
attack this giant, compared with itself, and, obstinately refusing to let go 
its hold, was starved to death. Professor Afzelius once related to me 
some particulars with respect to a species of ant in Sierra Leone, which 
proves the same point. He says that they march in columns that exceed 
all porary of numeration, and always pursue a straight course, from which 
nothing can cause them to deyiate: if they come to a house or other 
building, they storm or undermine it; if a river comes across them, though 
millions perish in the attempt, they endeavour to swim over it, 
This quality of perseverance in ants on one occasion led to very im- 
portant results, which affected a large portion of this habitable globe ; 
for the celebrated conqueror Timour, being once forced to take shelter 
from his enemies in a ruined building, where he sat alone many hours, 
1 Guv. de Bonnet, i. 535. Tuber, 197, 
9 Voy. to Maurit, 71, 
5 I was much amused, when dining in the forest of Fontainebleau, by the perti- 
nacity with which the hill-ant (2. rufa) attacked our food, haling from our very 
plates, while we were eating, long strips of meat many times their own size, 
