HABITAT: Sierra Leone.
Antennæ small, filiform, and about the length of the thorax. Head very
large, flattish, but rounded at top, and of a dirty black. Eyes small,
round, and placed at the back part of the head. {79}Thorax small and
brown. Abdomen the same colour, and smaller than the head, with a small
erected scale placed between it and the thorax. Legs red brown, having a
long tibial spur in the four hinder legs.
Drury referred this species to the Formica barbara of Linnæus, which is not
only distinct in the colour of the head, which is red, but also in having
two knots at the base of the abdomen, whence it belongs to the genus
Myrmica.
The reader will find some interesting general details relative to the
habits of the exotic species of the family to which this insect belongs, in
the following observations which were published in the preface to the third
volume, in the former edition of this work.
"The various species of _ants, cock-roaches, and other voracious vermin_,
are so numerous as to be one of the greatest plagues the collector abroad
has to encounter, insomuch that it is barely possible to preserve dried
insects, and other animals, with the utmost care and the closest boxes,
much less living ones, which require light and air: for as soon as
caterpillars are brought out of the woods, and placed within doors, with an
intention of breeding them, they seem to be, as in fact they are, out of
the order of nature, and quickly fall victims to the rapacity of those
agents whose province it is to remove animal or vegetable bodies, which
having arisen to maturity, or lost the principles of life, are on their
progress toward a slow dissolution, a state of useless inanimation or
noxious putrescence. Indeed among these none are more useful in this point
of view than the _ants_; but, considered as _noxious vermin_, and capable
of destroying animals, or, in many instances, of preventing and frustrating
human industry, we know perhaps of none more formidable. These insects,
whether considered as the efficient servants of nature, keeping clean and
wholesome the face of the creation, or as the ministers of Almighty Power
preserving a due equality between animals and vegetables, perform, without
exemption or reserve, his high behests. Like the angel of heaven, they walk
steadily forward in the line ordained them, and spare neither magnitude nor
beauty, neither the living nor the dead, but sweep away all kinds of animal
substances with undeviating rigour and rapacious perseverance.
"Sometimes they proceed, like those I have mentioned in the preface to my
first volume, driving all the inhabitants out of a town in a few hours, to
a scene of which Mr. Smeathman was an eye-witness; and in other instances,
as within the last twenty years, in some of the Caribbee Islands, like a
slow but irresistible fire, they gradually, in two or three years, take
possession of the land, and carry death and destruction to every kind of
animals; so that not only pigeons and fowls, lambs and kids, but even
calves and foals, which have been brought forth in the night, have been
destroyed before the rising of the sun; and the inhabitants themselves,
though they placed the posts of their beds in troughs of water, were driven
out of them by these inevitable disturbers. This slow but enormous increase
of ants in some of the sugar islands was unknown before the conclusion of
the last peace; since which time they seem, in conjunction with some other
insects, to have taken possession of many valuable sugar estates, and, by
sucking the canes, have rendered {80}them incapable of yielding any of that
rich juice from whence this vegetable salt is extracted.
"In consequence of this mischievous quality, estates which, by their usual
produce, have cleared to the proprietors eight or ten thousand pounds a
year, when overrun by these vermin, have not been able to pay the expense
of cultivation, except the produce has been changed by planting cotton or
indigo, which have been found to suffer much less from their depredations;
but, unhappily, most of the planters were ruined before they could submit
to give up the cultivation of sugar, which is by much the most profitable.
"It is not to be supposed, that hot countries are at all times infested to
this degree. They never are, however, without an astonishing number of
these insects, which no art, labour, or expense, can totally exclude from
the dwellings of the inhabitants. The number of different species is not
yet known, and is so great, added to the minuteness of most of them, that
it probably never will be discovered with any degree of certainty. There
are not less than fifteen or twenty species, which find their way into the
houses. These are not only to be distinguished by their size, figure, and
colour, but by their different properties. Some are near an inch long, from
which, to that of being scarce visible to the naked eye, are various sizes.
Some are long and slender, others short and thick; some are elegantly
shaped and highly polished; while others are, according to vulgar
apprehensions, deformed, armed with spines, and covered with bristly or
coarse and rough skins. Some species also are black as the deepest jet;
others of the deepest brown, or of different shades till they approach to
yellow; and not a few are variegated, having some of the prismatic colours
in full glow. They vary as much in their nature and dispositions: some
destroy fresh collected plants; and, in spite of weights laid upon the
books in which they are placed to dry, get in, cut the leaves and flowers
in pieces, and carry them away. Others, of different species, attack all
sorts of victuals, particularly sweet things, such as sugar and fruits. Mr.
Smeathman has had large sugar-dishes emptied by these insects in one night,
when the least opening has been left; and it is not easy to make any tin
canister, or other vessel, close enough to exclude these insidious
plunderers; so that the loss sustained in this article is often very great.
Some of them will assail the side-boards, and cover every wine-glass that
has had wine or punch left in it; nay, innumerable multitudes will even
attack the liquors on your table, and, if you are not attentive, drown
themselves in the very bowls and bottles before you. Some stragglers
frequently disturb you by creeping over your skin, and interrupt your sleep
or your meditations by biting, which, however, give pain but for a moment;
while others, though of the smallest size, with a sort of malignant
vengeance, creep under your clothes, and, by means of stings invisible to
the unassisted eye, inject a most acrid venom, which causes a pain as sharp
as a small spark of fire, lasting for some hours, and even a day or two
after being stung, the pain of which is much increased by irritating the
part. Some of the larger sorts also cause by their stings a pain which, for
some moments, is scarcely less than that of a bee of the same size; but it
{81}ceases in a few minutes, without leaving any inflammation behind. The
different manners of this large and sagacious tribe of insects are,
according to my friend's account, exceedingly various and amusing, but much
too long for this occasion; neither would it be proper for me to enter
farther into an account of them, as that gentleman purposes to treat
minutely on their various histories in his Voyages and Travels: a book
which, he informs me, is in some forwardness, and will doubtless afford
great entertainment and information to the curious part of mankind."