PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



39 



ants, that no such hordes of grain were made by them, and, 

 in fact, that they had no magazines in their nests in which 

 provisions of any kind were stored up. It was therefore sur- 

 mised that the ancients, observing them carry about their 

 pupa, which, in shape, size, and colour, not a little resemble a 

 grain of corn, and the ends of which they sometimes pull open 

 to let out the enclosed insect, mistook the one for the other, 

 and this action for depriving the grain of the corculum. Mr. 

 Gould, our countryman, was one of the first historians of the 

 ant who discovered that they did not store up corn; and 

 since his time naturalists have generally subscribed to that 

 opinion. 



Till the manners of exotic ants are more accurately explored, 

 it would, however, be rash to affirm that no ants have maga- 

 zines of provisions ; for although, during the cold of our 

 winters in this country, they remain in a state of torpidity, 

 and have no need of food, yet in warmer regions, during the 

 rainy seasons, when they are probably confined to their nests, 

 a store of provisions may be necessary for them. 1 Even in 

 northern climates, against wet seasons, they may provide in 

 this way for their sustenance and that of the young brood, 

 which, as Mr. Smeathman observes, are very voracious, and 

 cannot bear to be long deprived of their food ; else why do 

 ants carry worms, living insects, and many other such things 

 into their nests ? Solomon's lesson to the sluggard has been 

 generally adduced as a strong confirmation of the ancient 

 opinion : it can, however, only relate to the species of a warm 

 climate, the habits of which, as I have just observed, are pro- 



i This supposition has been verified by Col. Sykes's discovery at Poona in 

 India of a species of ants (Atta providens Sykes), which store up the seeds of a 

 kind of grass (Panicum) at the period of their being ripe in January and Fe- 

 bruary, and which he saw them in June and October bringing up and exposing 

 on the outside of their nests to the sun in heaps as big as a handful, apparently 

 for the purpose of drying them after being wetted by the rains of the monsoon. 

 ( Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 103.) It does not seem easy to assign any plausible 

 reason for the original collecting and storing, and subsequent drying and airing 

 of these seeds, except on the supposition of their being intended in some way for 

 food ; and though we have no previously recorded instance of ants feeding on 

 any other vegetable substance than such as are saccharine, yet, as all our expe- 

 rience proves how constantly in entomology exceptions are occurring to supposed 

 general laws, there seems good reason to believe that this is one of them. (See 

 the Rev. F. W. Hope's remarks on this subject in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. 

 211.) 



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