86 



PERFECT SOCIETIES OE INSECTS. 



Though ants have no mechanical inventions to diminish 

 the quantum of labour, yet by numbers, strength, and per- 

 severance they effect what at first sight seems quite beyond 

 their powers. Their strength is wonderful. I 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. 1 The Mahometans 

 hold, as Thevenot 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 some- 

 times, 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 longicollis Latr., to one of the legs of 

 which a small ant, scarcely a thirtieth part of its bulk, is fixed 

 by its jaws. It had probably the audacity to attack this 

 giant, compared with itself, and obstinately refusing to let go 

 its hold was starved to death. 2 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 powers of numer- 

 ation, and always pursue a straight course, from which 

 nothing can cause them to deviate : 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 important 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 



1 Voy. to Maurit. 71. 



2 I was much when dining in the forest of Fontainebleau, by the 

 pertinacity with which the hill-ant (F. rufa) attacked our food, haling from 

 our very plates, while we were eating, long strips of meat many times their own 

 size. 



