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 4_d._ or 6_d._ 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]
Vespidæ--Wasps, Hornets.
Concerning the generation of the Wasp, Topsel and Moufet have the
following: “Isidore affirms that Wasps come out of the putrefied
carkasses of asses, although he may be mistaken, for all agree that the
Scarabees are procreated from them: rather am I of opinion with Pliny,
1. ii. c. 20, and the Greek authors, that they are sprung from the dead
bodies of horses, for the horse is a valiant and warlike creature, hence
is that verse frequently and commonly used among the Greeks:
Wasps come from horses, Bees from bulls are bred.
And indeed their more than ordinary swiftnesse and their eagernesse in
fight, are sufficient arguments that they can take their original from
no other creature (much less from an asse, hart, or oxe) since that
Nature never granted to any creatures else, to excel both in swiftness
and valour. And surely that I may give another sense of that proverb of
Aristotle,
Hail the daughters of the wing-footed steed: