WOOD-AXTS. 273 



us building materials, and not for food, as was be- 

 lieved by the ancients. There are wonders enough 

 observable in the economy of ants, without having 

 recourse to fancy — wonders which made Aristotle 

 extol the sagacity of bloodless animals, and Cicero 

 ascribe to them not only sensation, but mind, reason, 

 and memory.* jElian, however, describes, as if he 

 had actually witnessed it, the ants ascending a stalk 

 of growing corn, and throwing down " the ears which 

 they bit off to their companions below," (ry Srifiy 

 Tu m™). Aldrovand assures us that he had seen 

 their granaries ; and others pretend that they shrewdly 

 bite off the ends of the grain to prevent it from ger- 

 minating, f These are fables which accurate obser- 

 vation has satisfactorily contradicted. 



But these errors, as it frequently happens, have 

 contributed to a more perfect knowledge of the in- 

 sects than we might otherwise have obtained ; for it 

 was the wish to prove or disprove the circumstance 

 of their storing up and feeding upon grain, which led 

 Gould to make his observations on English ants ; as 

 the notion of insects being produced from putrid 

 carcases had before led Redi to his ingenious experi- 

 ments on their generation. | Yet, although it is more 

 than eighty years since Gould's book was published, 

 we find the error still repeated in very respectable 

 publications.§ 



The coping which we above described as forming 

 the exterior of the wood-ants' nest, is only a small 

 portion of the structure, which consists of a great 

 number of interior chambers and galleries, with fun- 

 nel-shaped avenues leading to them. The coping, 



* In formica non modo sensus, sed etiam mens, ratio, memoria. 

 t Aldrovandus de Formicis, and Johnston, Thaumaturg. Nat. 

 p. 356. 



{ See details of tlicse in Insect Transformations, chap. i. 

 \ See Professor Paxton'a Illustr. of Scripture, i. 307. 



