Pliny's natural histoey. 
[Book XI. 
work in common, like bees; but whereas the last make their food, 
the former only store it away. If a person only compare-s the 
burdens which the ants carry with the size of their bodies, he 
must confess that there is no animal which, in proportion, is 
possessed of a greater degree of strength. These burdens they 
carry with the mouth, but when it is too large to admit of 
that, they turn their backs to it, and push it onwards with 
their feet, while they use their utmost energies with their shoul- 
ders. These insects, also, have a political community among 
themselves, and are possessed of both memorj^ and foresight.^ 
They gnaw each grain before they lay it by, for fear lest it 
should shoot while under ground ; those grains, again, which 
are too large for admission, they divide at the entrance of their 
holes ; and those which have become soaked by the rain, they 
bring out and dry.^^ They work, too, by night, during the 
full moon ; but when there is no moon, they cease working. 
And then, too, in their labours, what ardour they display, 
what wondrous carefulness ! Because they collect their stores 
from different quarters, in ignorance of the proceedings of one 
another, they have certain days set apart for holding a kind of 
market, on which they meet together and take stock.^^ What vast 
throngs are then to be seen hurrying together, what anxious 
enquiries appear to be made, and what earnest parleys^^ are 
going on among them as they meet ! We see even the very 
stones worn away by their footsteps, and roads beaten down 
by being the scene of their labours. Let no one be in doubt, 
then, how much assiduity and application, even in the very 
humblest of objects, can upon every occasion effect ! Ants are 
the only living beings, besides man, that bestow burial on the 
dead. In Sicily there are no winged ants to be found. 
(31.) The horns of an Indian ant, suspended in the temple 
« 
up grains against the winter, a period through which in reality they do 
not eat. 
S5 They stow away hits of meat and detached portions of fruit, to nourish 
their larvae with their juices. 
36 It is in reahty their larvae that they thus bring out to dry. The 
working ants, or neutrals, are the ones on which tliese labours devolve : 
the males and females are winged, the working ants are without wings. 
37 u recognitionem mutuam." 
38 Some modern writers express an opinion that when they meet, they 
converse and encourage one another by the medium of touch and smell. 
