PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



45 



The slightest zephyr disperses them ; and if in their progress 

 they chance to be over your head, if you walk slowly on 

 they will accompany you, and regulate their motions by 

 yours. The females continue sailing majestically in the centre 

 of these numberless males, who are all candidates for their 

 favour, each till some fortunate lover darts upon her, and, as 

 the Roman youth did the Sabine virgins, drags his bride from 

 the sportive crowd, and the nuptials are consummated in mid- 

 air; though sometimes the union takes place on the summit 

 of plants, but rarely in the nests. 1 After this danse de V amour 

 is celebrated, the males disappear, probably dying, or becom- 

 ing, with many of the females, the prey of birds or fish 2 ; for, 

 since they do not return to the nest, they cannot be destroyed, 

 as some have supposed, like the drone bees, by the neuters. 

 That many, both males and females, become the prey of fish, 

 I am enabled to assert from my own observation. In the 

 beginning of August, 1812, I was going up the Orford river 

 in Suffolk, in a row-boat, in the evening, when my attention 

 was caught by an infinite number of winged ants, both males 

 and females, at which the fish were every where darting, 

 floating alive upon the surface of the water. While passing 

 the river, these had probably been precipitated into it, either 

 by the wind, or by a heavy shower which had just fallen. 

 And M. Huber after the same event observed the earth 

 strewed with females that had lost their wings, all of which 

 could not form colonies/ 3 



Captain Haverfield, R. N., gave me an account of an extra- 

 ordinary appearance of ants observed by him in the Medway, 

 in the autumn of 1814, when he was first-lieutenant of the 

 Clorinde, which is confirmed by the following letter ad- 

 dressed by the surgeon of that ship, now Dr. Bromley, to 

 Mr. MacLeay : — 



" In September, 1814, being on the deck of the hulk to 

 the Clorinde, my attention was drawn to the water by the 

 first-lieutenant (Haverfield) observing there was something 

 black floating down with the tide. On looking with a glass, 



\ De Geer, ii. 1104. 



2 Gould, 99. 



3 Huber, 105. 



