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]