Curious Facts in the History of Insects; Including Spiders and Scorpions. / A Complete Collection of the Legends, Superstitions, Beliefs, and Ominous Signs Connected with Insects; Together with Their Uses in Medicine, Art, and as Food; and a Summary of Their Remarkable Injuries and Appearances.

by Frank Cowan

Formicidæ—Ants.

Herodotus, who wrote in the fifth century before the birth of Christ, tells the following fabulous story without the slightest trace of diffidence or disbelief: There are other Indians bordering on the City of Caspatyrus and the country of Pactyica, settled northward of the other Indians, whose mode of life resembles that of the Bactrians. They are the most warlike of the Indians, and these are they who are sent to procure the gold; for near this part is a desert by reason of the sand. In this desert then, and in the sand, there are Ants in size somewhat less indeed than dogs, but larger than foxes. Some of them are in the possession of the King of the Persians, which were taken there. These Ants, forming their habitations under ground, heap up the sand as the Ants in Greece do, and in the same manner; and they are very like them in shape. The sand that is heaped up is mixed with gold. The Indians, therefore, go to the desert to get this sand, each man having three camels, on either side a male one harnessed to draw by the side, and a female in the middle; this last the man mounts himself, having taken care to yoke one that has been separated from her young as recently as possible; for camels are not inferior to horses in swiftness, and are much better able to carry burdens.… The Indians then, adopting such a plan and such a method of harnessing, set out for the gold, having before calculated the time, so as to be engaged in their plunder during the hottest part of the day, for during the heat the Ants hide themselves under ground.… When the Indians arrive at the spot, having sacks with them, they fill these with the sand, and return with all possible expedition; for the Ants, as the Persians say, immediately discovering them by the smell, pursue them, and they are equaled in swiftness by no other animal, so that if the Indians did not get the start of them while the Ants were assembling, not a man of them could be saved. Now the male camels (for they are inferior in speed to the females) slacken their pace, dragging on, not both equally; but the females, mindful of the young they have left, do not slacken their pace. Thus the Indians, as the Persians say, obtain the greatest part of their gold.[490]

Concerning these remarkable Ants, Strabo and Arrian have preserved the statement of Megasthenes, who traveled in India about two centuries later than the time of Herodotus. As given by Strabo, who is somewhat more particular in his story than Arrian, it is as follows: Megasthenes, speaking of the Myrmeces (or Ants), says, among the Derdæ, a populous nation of the Indians, living toward the East and among the mountains, there was a mountain plain of about 3000 stadia in circumference; that below this plain were mines containing gold, which the Myrmeces, in size not less than foxes, dig up. They are excessively fleet, and subsist on what they catch. In winter they dig holes and pile up the earth in heaps, like moles, at the mouths of the openings. The gold dust which they obtain requires little preparation by fire. The neighboring people go after it by stealth with beasts of burden; for if it is done openly, the Myrmeces fight furiously, pursuing those that run away, and, if they seize them, kill them and the beasts. In order to prevent discovery, they place in various parts pieces of the flesh of wild beasts, and when the Myrmeces are dispersed in various directions, they take away the gold dust, and, not being acquainted with the mode of smelting it, dispose of it in its rude state at any price to merchants.[491]

Nearchus says he has himself seen several of the skins of these Ants, which were as large as the skins of leopards. They were brought by the Macedonian soldiers into Alexander’s camp.[492]

Pliny, as a matter of course, believed this marvelous story, and has inserted it in brief in his compilation of natural history. He adds, too, that in his time there were suspended in the temple of Hercules, at Erythræ, this Ant’s horns, which were looked upon as quite miraculous for their size. He also informs us it was of the color of a cat.[493]

Strabo and Arrian, from the manner in which they refer to the statements of Megasthenes and Nearchus, no doubt disbelieved them;[494] not so, however, Pomponius Mela.[495]

M. de Veltheim thinks this animal, which, as Pliny says, “has the color of a cat, and is in size as large as an Egyptian wolf,” is nothing more than, and really is, the Canis corsac, the small fox of India, and that by some mistake it was represented by travelers as an ant. It is not improbable, Cuvier says, that some quadruped, in making holes in the ground, may have occasionally thrown up some grains of the precious metal. Another interpretation of this story has also been suggested. We find some remarks of Mr. Wilson, in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society, on the Mahabharata, a Sanscrit poem, that various tribes on the mountains Meru and Mandara (supposed to lie between Hindostan and Thibet) used to sell grains of gold, which they called paippilaka, or Ant-gold, which, they said, was thrown up by Ants, in Sanscrit called pippilaka. In traveling westward, this story (in itself, no doubt, untrue) may very probably have been magnified to its present dimensions.[496]

The laborious life and foresight of the Ant have been celebrated throughout all antiquity, and from the wise Solomon down to the amiable La Fontaine, the sluggard has been referred to this insect to “learn her ways and be wise.”[497] The Arabians held the wisdom of these animals in such estimation, that they used to place one of them in the hands of a newly-born infant, repeating these words: “May the boy turn out clever and skillful.”[498] But their wisdom is magnified by all, and in the panegyrics of their providence we always find the following curious notion. Plutarch, in his Land and Water Creatures Compared, thus mentions it: “But that which surpasseth all other prudence, policy, and wit, is their (the Ants’) caution and prevention which they use, that their wheat and other corn may not spurt and grow. For this is certain, that dry it cannot continue alwayes, nor sound and uncorrupt, but in time will wax soft, resolve into a milky juice, when it turneth and beginneth to swell and chit; for fear, therefore, that it become not a generative seed, and so by growing, loose the nature and property of food for their nourishment, they gnaw that end thereof or head where it is wont to spurt and bud forth.”[499]

The ancients, observing the Ants carry their pupæ, which in shape, size, and color very much resemble a grain of corn, and the ends of which they sometimes pull open to let out the inclosed insect, no doubt mistook the one for the other, and this action for depriving the grain of the embryo of the plant.

Some modern writers, as Addison[500] and Pluche,[501] it is curious to observe, have fallen into this ancient error; so ancient, in fact, it is that some have supposed the Hebrew name of the Ant to be derived from it.[502] Among the poets, Prior asks:

Tell me, why the Ant

In summer’s plenty thinks of winter’s want?

By constant journey careful to prepare

Her stores, and bringing home the corny ear,

By what instruction does she bite the grain?

Lest, hid in earth, and taking root again,

It might elude the foresight of her care.[503]

Thus Watts, also:

They don’t wear their time out in sleeping or play;

But gather up corn in a sunshiny day,

And for winter they lay up their stores:

They manage their work in such regular forms,

One would think they foresaw all the frosts and the storms,

And so brought their food within doors.[504]

And Smart:

The sage, industrious Ant, the wisest insect,

And best economist of all the field:

For when as yet the favorable sun

Gives to the genial earth th’ enlivening ray,

——All her subterranean avenues,

And storm-proof cells, with management most meet,

And unexampled housewif’ry, she frames;

Then to the field she hies, and on her back

Burden immense! brings home the cumbrous corn:

Then, many a weary step, and many a strain,

And many a grievous groan subdued, at length

Up the huge hill she hardly heaves it home;

Nor rests she here her providence, but nips

With subtle tooth the grain, lest from her garner,

In mischievous fertility, it steal,

And back to daylight vegetate its way.[505]

Milton also entertained this erroneous opinion:

First crept

The parsimonious Emmet, provident

Of future, in small room large heart inclos’d;

Pattern of just equality perhaps

Hereafter, join’d in her popular tribes

Of commonalty.[506]

And also Dr. Johnson:

Turn on the prudent Ant thy heedless eyes,

Observe her labors, sluggard! and be wise.

No stern command, no monitory voice,

Prescribes her duties or directs her choice;

Yet timely provident she hastes away,

To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day;

When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain,

She crops the harvest, and she stores the grain.[507]

There is an old Eastern proverb, that “what the Ant collects in a year the monks eat up in a night,” which seems to be founded on the supposition that the Ants provide themselves with stores of food. Juvenal, also, observes, in his Sixth Satire, that “after the example of the Ant, some have learned to provide against cold and hunger.”[508]

“Since, therefore,” says Moufet, “(to winde up all in a few words) they (the Ants) are so exemplary for their great piety, prudence, justice, valour, temperance, modesty, charity, friendship, frugality, perseverance, industry and art; it is no wonder that Plato, in Phædone, hath determined, that they who without the help of philosophy have lead a civill life by custom or from their own diligence, they had their souls from Ants, and when they die they are turned to Ants again. To this may be added the fable of the Myrmidons, who being a people of Ægina, applied themselves to diligent labour in tilling the ground, continual digging, hard toiling, and constant

sparing, joyned with virtue, and they grew thereby so rich, that they passed the common condition and ingenuity of men, and Theogonis knew not how to compare them better than to Pismires, that they were originally descended from them, or were transformed into them, and as Strabo reports they were therefore called Myrmidons. The Greeks relate the history otherwise than other men do; namely, that Jupiter was changed into a Pismire, and so deflowered Eurymedusa, the mother of the Graces, as if he could no otherwise deceive the best woman, then in the shape of the best creature. Hence ever after was he called Pismire Jupiter, or, Jupiter, King of Pismires.…

“They do better, in my opinion, who observe the Pismire, and grow rich by following his manners in labor, industry, rest, and study. We read of Midas that he was the richest King of all the West, and when he was a boy, the Pismires carryed grains of wheat into his mouth while he slept, and so foreshowed without doubt that he should be endowed with the Pismire’s prudence, and should by his labour and frugality, gain so much riches, that he should be called the Golden boy of fortune, and the Darling of prosperity. Ælianus. And when the Ants did devour and eat up the live serpent of Tiberius Cæsar, which he so dearly loved, did they not thereby give him sufficient warning that he should take heed to himself for fear of the multitude, by whom he was afterwards cruelly murthered? Suetonius.”[509]

Of the wars and battles of the Ants, now so familiar from the writings of Huber and others, one of the oldest records is that given by Æneas Sylvius, who afterward became Pope Pius II., of an engagement contested with obstinacy by a great and a small species, on the trunk of a pear-tree. “This action,” he states, “was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity.” Another engagement of the same description is recorded by Olaus Magnus, as having happened previous to the expulsion of Christiern the Second, of Sweden, and the smallest species, having been victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their

own soldiers that had been killed, while they left those of their adversaries a prey to the birds.[510]

Alexander Ross, in his Appendix to the Arcana Microcosmi, p. 219, tells us: “That the cruel battels between the Venetians and Insubrians, and that also between the Liegeois and the Burgundians, in which about thirty thousand men were slain, were presignified by a great combat between two swarms of Emmets (Ants).”[511]

Ants were used in divination by the Greeks, and generally foretold good.[512] They were also considered an attribute of Ceres.[513]

The following extract is from an English North-Country chap-book, entitled the Royal Dream Book: “To dream of Ants or Bees denotes that you will live in a great town or city, or in a large family, and that you will be industrious, happy, well married, and have a large family.”[514] The Ant and the Bee are common figures to express these predictions.

I heard a mother once say to her child, “Never destroy Ants, for they are fairies, and will so bewitch our cows that they will give no milk.” This superstition prevails in particular about Washington and in Virginia.

Mrs. Meer Hassan Ali, in an interesting article on the Ants of India, remarks that she has often witnessed the Hindoos, male and female, depositing small portions of sugar near Ants’ nests as acts of charity to commence the day with.

With the natives of India, this lady also tells us, it is a common opinion that wherever the Red-ants colonize, prosperity attends the owner of that house.[515]

We read in Purchas’s Pilgrims, that “the natives of Cambaia and Malabar will go out of the path if they light on an Ant-hill, lest they might happily treade on some of them.”[516]

Other insects, as will be noticed in the course of this

volume, are looked upon by these people with the same respect.

Moufet says: “In Isthmus the priests sacrificed Pismires to the sun, either because they thought the sun the most beautiful, and therefore they would offer unto him the most beautiful creature, or the most wise, as seeing all things, and therefore they offered unto him the wisest creature.”[517]

In the twenty-seventh chapter of the Koran, which was revealed at Mecca, and entitled the Ant, we find, among other strange things, an odd story of the Ant, which has therefore given name to the chapter. It is as follows: “And his armies were gathered together unto Solomon, consisting of genii, and men, and birds; and they were led in distant bands, until they came to the valley of Ants.[518] And an Ant, seeing the hosts approaching, said, O Ants, enter ye into your habitations, lest Solomon and his army tread you under foot, and perceive it not. And Solomon smiled, laughing at her words, and said, O Lord, excite me that I may be thankful for thy favour, wherewith thou hast favoured me, and my parents; and that I may do that which is right, and well pleasing unto thee: and introduce me, through thy mercy, into paradise, among my servants, the righteous.”[519]

Thevenot mentions “Solomon’s Ant” among the “Beasts that shall enter into Paradise” in the belief of the Turks, and gives the following reason: “Solomon was the greatest king that ever was, for all creatures obey’d him, and brought him presents, amongst others, an Ant brought him a Locust, which it had dragged along by main force: Solomon, perceiving that the Ant had brought a thing bigger than itself, accepted the present, and preferred it before all other creatures.”[520]

Plutarch, speaking of the Ant, says: “Aratus in his prognostics setteth this down for a rain toward, when they bring forth their seeds and grains (pupæ), and lay them abroad to take the air:

‘When Ants make haste with all their eggs aload,

Forth of their holes to carry them abroad.’”[521]

In the Treasvrie of Avncient and Moderne Times, it is also asserted that “when Ants walk the thickest, and more than in vsuall numbers, meeting together confusedly, it is a manifest signe of raine.”[522]

It is related of the celebrated Timour, that being once forced to take shelter from his enemies in a ruined building, he sat alone many hours; and, desirous of diverting his mind from his hopeless condition, at length fixed his observation upon an Ant which was carrying a grain of corn (probably a pupa) larger than itself, up a high wall. Numbering the efforts it made to accomplish this object, he found that the grain fell sixty-nine times to the ground; but the seventieth time it reached the top of the wall. “This sight,” said Timour, “gave me courage at the moment, and I have never forgotten the lesson it conveyed.”[523]

Plutarch, in his comparison between land and water creatures, narrates the following anecdote: “Gleanthus the Philosopher, although he maintaineth not that beasts have any use of reason, made report nevertheless that he was present at the sight of such a spectacle and occurrent as this. There were (quoth he) a number of Ants which went toward another Ant’s hole, that was not their own, carrying with them the corpse of a dead Ant; out of which hole, there came certain other Ants to meet them on the way (as it were) to parl with them, and within a while returned back and went down again; after this they came forth a second, yea a third time, and retired accordingly until in the end they brought up from beneath (as it were a ransom for the dead body) a grub or little worm; which the others received and took upon their shoulders, and after they had delivered in exchange the aforesaid corpse, departed home.”[524]

Of the ingenuity of the Ant in removing obstacles, the following anecdote is a very appropriate illustration: A gentleman of Cambridge one day observed an Ant dragging along what, with respect to the creature’s size, might be denominated a log of wood. Others were severally employed,

each in its own way. Presently the Ant in question came to an ascent, where the weight of the wood seemed for a while to overpower him: he did not remain long perplexed with it; for three or four others, observing his dilemma, came behind and pushed it up. As soon, however, as he got it on level ground, they left it to his care, and went to their own work. The piece he was drawing happened to be considerably thicker at one end than the other. This soon threw the poor fellow into a fresh difficulty; he unluckily dragged it between two bits of wood. After several fruitless efforts, finding it would not go through, he adopted the only mode that even a man in similar circumstances would have taken: he came behind it, pulled it back again, and turned it on its edge; when, running again to the other end, it passed through without the slightest difficulty.[525]

Franklin was much inclined to believe Ants could communicate their thoughts or desires to one another, and confirmed his opinion by several experiments. Observing that when an Ant finds some sugar, it runs immediately under ground to its hole, where, having stayed a little while, a whole army comes out, unites and marches to the place where the sugar is, and carry it off by pieces; and that if an Ant meets with a dead fly, which it cannot carry alone, it immediately hastens home, and soon after some more come out, creep to the fly, and carry it away; observing this, he put a little earthen pot, containing some treacle, into a closet, into which a number of Ants collected, and devoured the treacle very quickly. He then shook them out, and tied the pot with a thin string to a nail which he had fastened in the ceiling, so that it hung down by the string. A single Ant by chance remained in the pot, and when it had gorged itself upon the treacle, and wanted to get off, it was under great concern to find a way, and kept running about the bottom of the pot, but in vain. At last it found, after many attempts, the way to the ceiling, by going along the string. After it was come there, it ran to the wall, and thence to the ground. It had scarcely been away half an hour, when a great swarm of Ants came out, got up to the ceiling, and crept along the string into the pot, and began to eat again. This they continued till the treacle was all

eaten; in the mean time one swarm running down the string, and the other up.[526]

It has been suggested, that in such instances as the preceding, the Ants may have been led by the scent or trace of treacle likely to be left by the solitary prisoner; and the following case, related by Bradley, is quoted to favor the opinion: “A nest of Ants in a nobleman’s garden discovered a closet, many yards within the house, in which conserves were kept, which they constantly attended till the nest was destroyed. Some, in their rambles, must have first discovered this depot of sweets, and informed the rest of it. It is remarkable that they always went to it by the same track, scarcely varying an inch from it, though they had to pass through two apartments; nor could the sweeping and cleaning of the rooms discomfit them, or cause them to pursue a different route.”[527]

Dionisio Carli, of Piacenza, a missionary in Congo, lying sick at that place, was awakened one night by his monkey leaping on his head, and almost at the same time by his Blacks crying out, much to his surprise, “Out! Out! Father!” Thoroughly awake now, Carli asked them what was the matter? “The Ants,” they cried, “are broke out, and there is no time to be lost!” Not being able to stir, he bid them carry him into the garden, which they did, four of them lifting him upon his straw bed; and yet though very quick about it, the Ants had already commenced crawling up his legs. After shaking them off their master, the Blacks took straw and fired it on the floor of four rooms, where these insects by this time were over half a foot thick. The pests being thus destroyed, Carli was conveyed back to his chamber, where he found the stench so great from the burnt bodies, that he was forced, he says, to hold his monkey close to his nose!

These Ants, Carli relates, ate up every living object within their reach; and of one cow, which was accidentally left over night in the stable through which they passed, nothing but the bones were found the next morning.[528] We need not wonder at this, if we believe what Bosman has said of the Black-ants of Guinea, which were so surprisingly rapacious

that no animal could stand before them. He relates an instance where they reduced for him one of his live sheep in one night to a perfect skeleton, and that so nicely that it surpassed the skill of the best anatomists.[529] Du Chaillu says the elephant and gorilla fly before the attack of the Bashikouay-ants, and the black men run for their lives. Many a time has he himself, he says, been awakened out of a sleep, and obliged to rush out of his hut and into the water to save his life![530] The Driver-ants[531] of Western Africa, A. nomma arcens, have been known to kill the Python natalensis, the largest serpent of that part of the world.[532]

Col. St. Clair, after a visit by a species of small Red-ants, makes mention of the following instance, among others, of their singular destructiveness: “I next discovered that a little pet deer, which I had purchased from a negro, was extremely ill. I could not discover the cause of its malady, until, placing it on its legs, I observed that it would not let one foot touch the ground, and, on examining it, I found, to my grief, that the Red-ants had absolutely eaten a hole into the bone. The poor little animal pined all that day and died in the evening.”[533]

Capt. Stedman relates that the Fire-ants of Surinam caused a whole company of soldiers to start and jump about as if scalded with boiling water; and its nests were so numerous that it was not easy to avoid them.[534] And Knox, in his account of Ceylon, mentions a black Ant, called by the natives Coddia or Kaddiya,[535] which, he says, “bites desperately, as bad as if a man were burnt by a coal of fire; but they are of a noble nature, and will not begin unless you disturb them.” The reason the Singhalese assign for the horrible pain occasioned by their bite is curious, and is thus related by Knox: “Formerly these Ants went to ask a wife of the Noya, a venomous and noble kind of snake;[536] and because

they had such a high spirit to dare to offer to be related to such a generous creature, they had this virtue bestowed upon them, that they should sting after this manner. And if they had obtained a wife of the Noya, they should have had the privilege to sting full as bad as he.”[537] Capt. Stedman has a story of a large Ant that stripped the trees of their leaves, to feed, as was supposed by the natives of Surinam, a blind serpent under ground,[538] which is somewhat akin to this: as is also another, related to Kirby and Spence by a friend, of a species of Mantis, taken in one of the Indian islands, which, according to the received opinion among the natives, was the parent of all their serpents.[539] But, the reverse: Among the harmless snakes of Mexico is a beautiful one about a foot in length, and of the thickness of the little finger, which appears to take pleasure in the society of Ants, insomuch that it will accompany these insects upon their expeditions, and return with them to their usual nest. From this peculiarity it is called by the Spaniards and Mexicans the “Mother of the Ants.”[540]

When in Africa, Du Chaillu was told by the natives that criminals in former times were exposed to the path of the Bashikouay-ants, as the most cruel way of putting them to death.[541] This dreadful manner of torturing was at one time also practiced by the Singhalese, and I have heard that several British soldiers have thus met their fate. The Termites have been referred to before as having been employed for a similar purpose.

To check the ravages of the Coffee-bug, Lecanium coffea, Walker, which for several years was devastating some of the plantations of Ceylon, the experiment was made of introducing the Red-ants, Formica smaragdina, Fab., which feed greedily on the Coccus.[542] But the remedy threatened

to be attended with some inconvenience, for, says Tennent, the Malabar coolies, with bare and oiled skins, were so frequently and fiercely assaulted by the Ants as to endanger their stay on the estates.

The pupæ or cocoons of the Ants, during the day, are placed near the surface of the Ant-hills to obtain heat, which is indispensable to the growth of the inclosed insects. This is taken advantage of in Europe to collect the cocoons in large quantities as food for nightingales and larks. The cocoons of a species of Wood-ant, Formica rufa, are the only kind chosen. In most of the towns of Germany, one or more individuals make a living during summer by this business alone. “In 1832,” says a contributor to the Penny Encyclopedia, “we visited an old woman at Dottendorf, near Bern, who had collected for fourteen years. She went to the woods in the morning, and collected in a bag the surfaces of a number of Ant-hills where the cocoons were deposited, taking Ants and all home to her cottage, near which she had a small tiled shed covering a circular area, hollowed out in the center, with a trench full of water around it. After covering the hollow in the center with leafy boughs of walnut or hazel, she strewed the contents of her bag on the level part of the area within the trench, when the Nurse-ants immediately seized the cocoons, and carried them into a hollow under the boughs. The cocoons were thus brought into one place, and after being from time to time removed, and black ones separated by a boy who spread them out on a table, and swept off what were bad with a strong feather, they were ready for market, being sold for about 4d. or 6d. a quart. Considerable quantities of these cocoons are dried for winter food of birds, and are sold in the shops.”[543]

Ants not only furnish food to man for his birds, but also food for himself, in both the pupa and imago states. Nicoli Conti, who traveled in India in the early part of the fifteenth century, says the Siamese eat a species of Red-ant, of the size of a small crab, which they consider a great delicacy seasoned with pepper.[544] At the present day, the pupæ of a species of Ants are a costly luxury with these people. They are not much larger than grains of sand, and are sent to table curried, or rolled in green leaves, mingled with shreds

or very fine slices of fat pork.[545] And in the province of Michuacan, Mexico, is a singular species of Ant, which carries on its abdomen “a little bagful of a sweet substance, of which the children are very fond: the Mexicans suppose this to be a kind of honey collected by the insect; but Clavigero thinks it rather its eggs.”[546]

Piso, De Laet, Marcgrave, and other writers mention their being an article of food in different parts of South America. Piso speaks of yellow Ants called Cupia inhabiting Brazil, the abdomen of which many used for food, as well as a large species under the name of Tama-joura: “Alia præterea datur grandis species Tama-ioura dicta digiti articulum adæquans. Quarum etiam clunes dessicantur et friguntur pro bono alimento.”[547] Says De Laet: “Denique formicæ hic visuntur grandissimæ, quas indigenæ vulgo comedunt; et in foris venales habent.”[548] And again: “Formicis vescebantur, easquæ studiose ad victum educabant.”[549] Lucas Fernandes Piedrahita, in his Historia General de las Conquistas del Nuevo Regno de Granada, states that cakes of Cazave and Ants were eaten in that country: “Al tiempo de tostarlas para este efecto, dan el mismo olor que los quesillos, que se labran para comer asados.”[550] Herrera says, the natives of New Granada made their main food of Ants, which they kept and reared in their yards.[551] Sloane confirms this, and says they are publicly sold in the markets.[552] Abbeville de Noromba tells us these great Ants are fricasseed.[553] Schomburgk, in his journey to the sources of the Essequibo, one evening saw all the boys of a village out shouting and chasing with sticks and palm leaves a large species of winged Ant, which they collected in great numbers in their calabashes for food. When roasted or boiled, he says, the natives considered these insects a great delicacy.[554] Humboldt informs us that Ants are eaten by the Marivatanos and Margueritares, mixed with resin for sauce.[555]

Mr. Consett, in his Travels in Sweden, makes mention of a young Swede who ate live Ants with the greatest relish imaginable.[556] This author states also, that in some parts of Sweden Ants are distilled along with rye, to give a flavor to the inferior kinds of brandy.[557]

The inhabitants of the Tonga Group have a superstitious belief that when their kings, and matabooles, or inferior chiefs, die, they are wafted to Bulotu—“the island of the blessed,” but the spirits of the lower class remain in the world, and feed on Ants and lizards.[558]

Ants also furnish us with an acid, called by the chemists Formic, which is said to answer the same purposes as the acetous acid. It is obtained in two modes: 1st. By distillation; the insects are introduced into a glass retort, distilled by a gentle heat, and the acid is found in the recipient. 2d. By the process called lixiviation; the Ants are washed in cold water, spread out upon a linen cloth, and boiling water poured over them, which becomes charged with the acid part.[559]

Formic acid is shed so sensibly by the wood Ant, Formica rufa, when an Ant-hill is stirred, that it can occasion an inflammation. If a living frog, it is asserted, be fixed upon an Ant-hill which is deranged, the animal will die in less than five minutes, even without having been bitten by the Ants.[560]

We read in Purchas’s Pilgrims that the large Ant of the West Indies is “so poysonfull that herewith the Indians infect their arrowes so remedilesse, that not foure of an hundred which are wounded escape.”[561]

The medicinal virtues of the Ant are as follows: “Ants, Formica minor of Schroder, heat and dry, and incite to venery; their acid smell mightily refreshes the vital spirits. They are said to cure the Flora, Lepra, and Lentigo. The eggs (pupæ) are effectual against deafness, and correct the hairiness of the cheeks of children being rubbed thereon.”

The Horse-ant, Formica major, Schrod., “provokes to

venery, and the oil thereof, by infusion, is good for the gout and palsy.”[562]

Sloane tells us the Spaniards in the West Indies have a very highly valued medicated earth called “Makimaki,” which he thinks is made of the nests of Ants.[563]

There is a species of Ant in Cayenne, Formica bispinosa, which collects from the bombax and silk-cotton trees a sort of lint which the natives value much as a styptic in cases of hemorrhage.[564]

The magicians, as mentioned by Pliny, recommended that the parings of all the finger-nails should be thrown at the entrance of Ant-holes, and the first Ant to be taken which should attempt to draw one into the hole; for if this, they asserted, be attached to the neck of a patient, he will experience a speedy cure.[565]

The two following remarkable cures effected by Ants of themselves are worthy of being noticed: Schuman, a missionary among the negroes of Surinam, relates in one of his letters, that after a most dangerous attack of the acclimating fever, his body was covered with boils and painful sores. He lay in his cot as helpless as a child, and had no one to administer any relief or food but a poor old negro woman, who sometimes was obliged to follow the rest to the plantations in the woods. One morning while she was absent, after spending a most restless and painful night, he observed at sunrise an immense host of Ants entering through the roof, and spread themselves over the inside of his chamber; and expecting little else than that they would make a meal of him, he commended his soul to God, and hoped thus to be released from all suffering. They presently covered his bed, and entering his sores caused him the most tormenting pain. However, they soon quitted him, and continued their march, and from that time he gradually recovered his health.[566]

The second is a case of stiffness in the knee effectually cured: In 1798, Mrs. Jane Crabley, aged 56 years, began to complain of a most torturing pain, and considerable enlargement of the knee-pan, which she described as, and

which her neighbors believed to be, a smart paroxysm of gout. Early in February, 1799, the inflammation and pain entirely ceased, but the swelling continued, and rather increased. The joint of the knee, from disuse, became perfectly stiff, and, owing to the particular form and size of her breasts, no relief could be gained by the use of crutches. However, toward the end of May, the Ants became so strangely troublesome to her, that she was sometimes obliged to avail herself of the help of travelers to assist her in changing her station. Still, however, they followed her, and seemed entirely attracted by her now useless knee. She was at first considerably annoyed by these little torments, but, in a few days, became not only reconciled to their intrusion, but was desirous of having her chair placed where she imagined them most to abound, even giving them freer access to her knee by turning down her stocking; for, she said, “the cold numbness she suffered just around the patella was eased and relieved by their bite; and that it was even pleasurable;” and, strange to say, these insects bit her nowhere else. The skin at first was pale and sallow, but began now to assume a lively red color; a clear and subtile liquid oozed from every puncture the Ants had left; the swelling and stiffness of the joint gradually abated; and, on the 25th of July, she walked home with the help of a stick, and before winter perfectly recovered the use of her limb.[567]

Says Plutarch, as translated by Holland: “The bear finding herself upon fulness given to loth and distaste for food, she goes to find out Ants’ nests, where she sits her down, lilling out her tongue, which is glib and soft with a kind of sweet and slimy humour, until it be full of Ants and their egges, then draweth it she in again, swalloweth them down, and thereby cureth her lothing stomack.”[568]

Also, in the Treasurie of Avncient and Moderne Times, we find: “The Bear, being poysoned by the Hearbe named Mandragoras, or Mandrake, doth purge his bodie by the eating of Ants or Pismires.”[569]

M. Huber, initiated in the mysteries of the life of these

insects, and whose observations can be most relied on, has made us acquainted with two of their maladies: one is a species of vertigo, occasioned, as he thinks, by a too great heat of the sun, and which transforms them for two or three minutes into a sort of bacchantes; the other malady, much more severe, causes them to lose the faculty of directing themselves in a right line. These Ants turn in a very narrow circle, and always in the same direction. A virgin female, inclosed in a sand-box, and attacked by this mania, made a thousand turns by the hour, describing a circle of about an inch in diameter; it continued this operation for seven days, and even during the night.[570]

Immense swarms of winged Ants are occasionally met with, and some have been recorded of such prodigious density and magnitude as to darken the air like a thick cloud, and to cover the ground or water for a considerable extent where they settled. We find in the memoirs of the Berlin Academy a description of a remarkable swarm, observed by M. Gleditch, which from afar produced an effect somewhat similar to that of an Aurora Borealis, when, from the edge of the cloud, shoot forth by jets many columns of flame and vapor, many rays like lightning, but without its brilliancy. Columns of Ants were coming and going here and there, but always rising upward, with inconceivable rapidity. They appeared to raise themselves above the clouds, to thicken there, and become more and more obscure. Other columns followed the preceding, raised themselves in like manner, shooting forth many times with equal swiftness, or mounting one after the other. Each column resembled a very slender net-work, and exhibited a tremulous, undulating, and serpentine motion. It was composed of an innumerable multitude of little winged insects, altogether black, which were continually ascending and descending in an irregular manner.[571] A similar kind of Ants is spoken of by Mr. Accolutte, a clergyman of Breslau, which resembled columns of smoke, and which fell on the churches and tops of the houses, where they could be gathered by handfuls. In the German Ephemerides, Dr. Chas. Rayger gives an account of a large swarm which crossed over the town of Posen, and was directing its course toward the Danube. The whole

town was strewed with Ants, so that it was impossible to walk without crushing thirty or forty at every step. And more recently, Mr. Dorthes, in the Journal de Physique for 1790, relates the appearance of a similar phenomenon at Montpellier. The shoals moved about in different directions, having a singular intestine motion in each column, and also a general motion of rotation. About sunset all fell to the ground, and, on examining them, they were found to belong to the Formica nigra of Linnæus.[572]

“In September, 1814,” says Dr. Bromley, surgeon of the Clorinde, in a letter to Mr. MacLeay, “being on the deck of the hulk to the Clorinde (then in the river Medway), my attention was drawn to the water by the first lieutenant observing there was something black floating down the tide. On looking with a glass, I discovered they were insects. The boat was sent, and brought a bucketful of them on board; they proved to be a large species of Ant, and extended from the upper part of Salt-pan Reach out toward the Great Nore, a distance of five or six miles. The column appeared to be in breadth eight or ten feet, and in height about six inches, which I suppose must have been from their resting one upon another.”[573] Purchas seems to have witnessed a similar phenomenon on shore. “Other sorts of Ants,” says he, “there are many, of which some become winged, and fill the air with swarms, which sometimes happens in England. On Bartholomew, 1613, I was in the island of Foulness, on our Essex shore, where were such clouds of these flying pismires, that we could nowhere flee from them, but they filled our clothes; yea, the floors of some houses where they fell were in a manner covered with a black carpet of creeping Ants, which they say drown themselves about that time of the year in the sea.”[574]

When Colonel Sir Augustus Frazer, of the British horse-artillery, was surveying, on the 6th of October, 1813, the scene of the battle of the Pyrenees from the summit of the mountain called Pena de Aya, or Les Quartres Couronnes, he and his friends were enveloped by a swarm of Ants, so numerous as entirely to intercept their view, so that they were

obliged to remove to another station in order to get rid of them.[575]

“Not long since,” says Josselyn in his Voyage to New England, London, 1674, “winged Ants were poured down upon the Lands out of the clouds in a storm betwixt Blackpoint and Saco, where the passenger might have walkt up to the Ancles in them.”[576]

Wingless Ants, in swarms or armies, also migrate at particular seasons; but for what purpose is not clear, except to obtain better forage. In Guiana, Mr. Waterton says he has met with a colony of a species of small Ant marching in order, each having in its mouth a leaf; and the army extended three miles in length, and was six feet broad.[577]

It is recorded by Oviedo and Herrera, that the whole island of Hispaniola was almost abandoned in consequence of the Sugar-Ant, Formica omnivora of Linnæus, which, in 1518 and the two succeeding years, overran in such countless myriads that island, devouring all vegetation, and causing a famine which nearly depopulated the Spanish colony. A tradition, says Schomburgk, prevails in Jamaica that the town of Sevilla Nueva, which was founded by Esquivel in the beginning of the sixteenth century, was entirely deserted for a similar reason. Herrera relates that, in order to get rid of this fearful scourge in Hispaniola, the priests caused great processions and vows to be made in honor of their patron saint, St. Saturnin, and that the day of this saint was celebrated with great solemnities, and the Ants in consequence began to disappear. How this saint was chosen, we read in Purchas’s Pilgrims: “This miserie (caused by the Ants) so perplexed the Spaniards, that they sought as strange a remedie as was the disease, which was to chuse some Saint for their Patron against the Antes. Alexander Giraldine, the Bishop, having sung a solemne and Pontifical Masse, after the consecration and Eleuation of the Sacrament, and devout prayers made by him and the people, opened a Booke in which was a Catalogue of the Saints, by lot to chuse some he or she Saint, whom God should please to appoint their Advocate against the Calamitie. And the Lot fell vpon Saint Saturnine, whose Feast is on the nine

and twentieth of Nouember; after which the Ant damage became more tolerable, and by little and little diminished, by God’s mercie and intercession of that Saint.”[578]

These devouring Ants showed themselves about the year 1760 in Barbados, and caused such devastations that, in the words of Dr. Coke, “it was deliberated whether that island, formerly so flourishing, should not be deserted.” In 1763, Martinique was visited by these devastating hordes; and about the year 1770 they made their appearance in the island of Granada. Barbados, Granada, and Martinique suffered more than any other islands from this plague. Granada especially was reduced to a state of the most deplorable desolation; for, it is said, their numbers there were so immense that they covered the roads for many miles together; and so crowded were they in many places that the impressions made by the feet of horses, which traveled over them, would remain visible but for a moment or two, for they were almost instantly filled up by the surrounding swarms. Mr. Schomburgk assures us that calves, pigs, and chickens, when in a helpless state, were attacked by such large numbers of these Ants that they perished, and were soon reduced to skeletons when not timely assisted. It is asserted by Dr. Coke that the greatest precaution was requisite to prevent their attacks on men who were afflicted with sores, on women who were confined, and on children that were unable to assist themselves. Mr. Castle, from his own observation, states that even burning coals laid in their way, were extinguished by the amazing numbers which rushed upon them.

Notwithstanding the myriads that were destroyed by fire, water, poison, and other means, the devastations continued to such an alarming extent, that in 1776 the government of Martinique offered a reward of a million of their currency for a remedy against this plague; and the legislature of Granada offered £20,000 for the same object; but all attempts proved ineffectual until the hurricane in 1780 effected what human power had been unable to accomplish.

In 1814, the Ants again made their appearance in the island of Barbados, doing considerable injury; but happily they did not continue long.[579]

Malouet, in visiting the forests of Guiana, of which he has spoken in his travels into that part of the globe, perceived in the midst of a level savanna, as far as the eye could reach, a hillock which he would have attributed to the hand of man, if M. de Prefontaine, who accompanied him, had not informed him that, in spite of its gigantic construction, it was the work of black Ants of the largest species (most probably of the genus Ponera). He proposed to conduct him, not to the Ant-hill, where both of them would infallibly have been devoured, but to the road of the workers. M. Malouet did not approach within more than forty paces of the habitation of these insects. It had the form of a pyramid truncated at one-third of its height, and he estimated that its elevation might be about fifteen or twenty feet, on a basis of from thirty to forty. M. de Prefontaine told him that the cultivators were obliged to abandon a new establishment, when they had the misfortune to meet with one of these fortresses, unless they had sufficient strength to form a regular siege. This even occurred to M. de Prefontaine himself on his first encampment at Kourva. He was desirous of forming a second a little farther on, and perceived upon the soil a mound of earth similar to that which we have just described. He caused a circular trench to be hollowed, which he filled with a great quantity of dry wood, and, after having set fire to it in every point of its circumference, he attacked the Ant-hill with a train of artillery. Thus every issue was closed to the hostile army, which, to escape from the invasion of the flames and the shaking and plowing of the ground by the cannon-balls, was obliged to traverse, in its retreat, a trench filled with fire, where it was entirely cut off.[580]

The Portuguese found such prodigious numbers of Ants upon their first landing at Brazil, that they called them Rey de Brazil, King of Brazil, a name which they now there bear.[581]

Mr. Southey states, on the authority of Manoel Felix, that the Red-ants devoured the cloths of the altar in the Convent of S. Antonio, or S. Luiz (Maranham, Brazil), and also brought up into the church pieces of shrouds from the graves; whereupon the friars prosecuted them according to

due form of ecclesiastical law. What the sentence was in this case, we are unable to learn. A similar case, however, the historian informs us, had occurred in the Franciscan Convent at Avignon, where the Ants did so much mischief that a suit was instituted against them, and they were excommunicated, and ordered by the friars, in pursuance of their sentence, to remove within three days to a place assigned them in the center of the earth. The Canonical account gravely adds, that the Ants obeyed, and carried away all their young, and all their stores.[582]

Annius writes, that an ancient city situate near the Volscian Lake, and called Contenebra, was in times past overthrown by Ants, and that the place was thereupon commonly called to his day, “the camp of the Ants.”[583]

Ctesias makes mention “of a horse-pismire (i.e. the bigger kind of them in hollow trees) which was fed by the Magi, till hee grew to such a vast bulke as to devour two pound of flesh a daye.”[584]

Martial has written the following beautiful epigram on an Ant inclosed in amber: “While an Ant was wandering under the shade of the tree of Phaeton, a drop of amber enveloped the tiny insect; thus she, who in life was disregarded, became precious by death.

“A drop of amber from the weeping plant,

Fell unexpected and embalmed an Ant;

The little insect we so much contemn

Is, from a worthless Ant, become a gem.”[585]

It has been said, remarks Mr. Southey, and regarded as a vulgar error, that Ants cannot pass over a line of chalk: the fact, however, is certain. Mr. Coleridge tried the experiment at Malta, he continues, and immediately discovered the cause: The formic acid is so powerful, that it acts upon the chalk, and the legs of the insect are burnt by the instantaneous effervescence![586]

Paxamus says, that if you take some Ants and burn them, you will drive away the others, as experience has taught us.

Ants also, he continues, will not touch a vessel with honey, although the vessel may happen to be without its cover, if you wrap it in white wool, or if you scatter white earth or ruddle round it. If a person, continues Paxamus, takes a grain of wheat carried by an Ant with the thumb of his left hand, and lays it in a skin of Phœnician dye, and ties it round the head of his wife, it will prove to be the cause of abortion in a state of gestation.[587]

Pliny says the proper remedy for the venom of the Solipuga or Solpuga Ant, and for that of all kinds of Ants, is a bat’s heart.[588]

Callicrates used to make Ants, and other such little creatures, out of ivory, with so much skill and ingenuity that other men could not discern the counterfeits from the originals even with the help of glasses.[589]