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ANT. 
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the fruits; they often associate themselves with 
wasps, wood-lice, and earwigs, and share in their 
depredations; and, in many districts of country, 
they destroy considerable quantities of linseed, 
hempseed, and rapeseed, and take very extensive 
and most mischievous possession of grass fields 
and other dry pasture-lands, Their nests or hil- 
locks in the fields iook to the eye like mimic 
mounds or small hay-cocks; they utterly impover- 
ish or rather temporarily destroy every inch of 
land which they occupy; and they very often 
have possession of one-twelfth or one-tenth of a 
field,—and, in the case of old and neglected dry 
pastures, they sometimes succeed in usurping 
one-third, one-half, or even more than one-half. 
A species of one of the smallest kind of ants, 
Myrmica unifasciata, found its way some years 
ago into the very heart of London and some other 
large towns, passed in swarms and mimic torrents 
into the interior of houses, and, in some instances, 
made such dismal havoc and took such large pos- 
session as to compel the inhabitants to flee, and 
occasion the houses to be condemned. 
A thin arsenic syrup, made by boiling together 
one ounce of arsenic, some sugar, and a quart of 
water, may be placed in oyster-shells or other 
small vessels at the foot of fruit trees infested 
with ants; and it will speedily attract them by 
its sweetness, and almost instantly prove fatal; 
yet it 1s so very active a poison that it ought 
never to be used when children or any valuable 
domestic animals can have access to the locality. 
Gardeners ought rather to find out and disturb 
the ants’ nests a little before the time of the males 
and females emerging from their pupa state, and 
so terminate their depredations by preventing 
their propagation.—Ant-hills on grass lands ought 
all to be destroyed in the same season in which 
they appear. Some farmers, either in summer 
or autumn, dig up the ant-hills, cut them in 
pieces, and scatter them in the vicinity ; but the 
ants, instead of being destroyed by this treat- 
ment, conceal themselves for a little among the 
roots of the grass, and then form new communi- 
ties and ant-hills, and in consequence are mis- 
chievously disseminated. When the ant-hills are 
interfered with in summer or autumn, they ought 
to be lifted by the spade into heaps, and burned ; 
but they are far more effectively and at the same 
time, easily destroyed in winter, simply by being 
turned upside down and placed a little aside by 
the spade; in order that the ants may be killed 
by the frost. “The most usual mode is to cut 
off the crown of the ant-hill with a sharp spade 
of a semicircular form—somewhat in the shape of 
a week’s old moon, with the horns at about ten 
inches distance—and laying it with the grassy 
side downwards upon the ground. The ants are 
thus cleared out, the clods being completely pul- 
verized and thrown around; and the hole is left 
empty for three or four weeks to secure the de- 
struction, by the frost and rain, of any insects 
which may still remain; after which the sod is 
ANTENN 
replaced in its former position, and trodden or 
rolled down until even with the surface. The 
operation is commonly done at any leisure time 
during the winter ; but some farmers either burn 
the clods, or else put quick lime in the holes be- 
fore digging them up, in which case they deem 
it preferable to defer the process until the early 
part of the spring, as a top dressing is thus formed 
for the growth of the seeds.” An expeditious 
method long ago practised in Norfolk is, with 
any one of several ploughs invented for the pur- 
pose, to cut off the ant-hills level with the field, 
and afterwards to cart them away; but this 
method seems merely to diminish or greatly check 
the ants, and not to exterminate them. Little 
cumuli or heaps of sandy particles, called sprout 
hills, are sometimes formed in meadow or hay 
fields by ants in wet weather, and they very 
quickly, blunt the edge of the scythe, and serve 
as niduses for new communities; but they may 
readily be destroyed by heavy rolling, or even by 
the studied tread of the feet of the hay-makers. 
—No better a method of assailing the home kind 
of ants can be practised than to scald them with 
boiling water. ‘Iwas astonished one morning 
in going into my dairy,” says a correspondent 
in the ‘Magazine of Domestic Economy,’ “to see 
the walls and floor for the space of a yard lit- 
erally covered with these insects, and for a time | 
considered their expulsion to be hopeless ; how- | 
ever, I searched carefully to discover if there 
were any opening where they could obtain egress ; 
and at length found the mass of life was most 
dense and full of motion at one spot. It was a 
very small hole at the junction of the wall and 
floor. I immediately had a tea-kettle of boiling 
water brought, and deliberately poured half of it 
into the hole, and the remainder over the ants 
that were around. Their death was instantane- 
ous; and the dairy being on the ground floor, no 
ill consequences could arise from the damp occa~- 
sioned by the water.’—Piciorial Museum of Ani- 
mated Nature—Mr. Duncan on Insects in Quar. 
Journal of Agr.—Smellie’s Philosophy of Natural 
History.— Treatise on British Husbandry in Lib. 
of U. Knowledge—Sproule’s Treatise on Agr.—sSo- 
crety of Gentlemen's Complete Farmer.— Magazine 
of Domestic Economy. — A. Young’s Farmer's 
Calendar. 
ANTENNA. The articulated flexible horns, 
on the head of insects and crustaceous animals ; 
commonly two in number, and very rarely four, 
These are such a peculiar and prominent feature, 
that most of the older entomologists have founded 
one of the leading characters of the different 
genera of insects on their situation, structure, 
and appearance. All insects, however, are not 
provided with antennz: in the spider, scorpion, 
and some monoculi, they are entirely wanting. 
It is to be observed, in general, that perfect in- 
sects, with six legs, have two antenne; but that 
those having more, either want antenne, or have 
