INSECTS.

B

ANT.

(FORMICA.)

THE natural history of Ants has been involved in much error. The accounts of the ancients are more fabulous than true; and those even of some modern naturalists are not entirely to be depended upon. Ants were long, and generally, supposed to subsist on corn, and celebrated for their industry in collecting it an error occasioned by the resemblance of their pupæ, on a cursory view, to grains of wheat, and by their care in removing them to greater or smaller elevations, according to the state of the atmosphere.* They were also anciently believed to bite the germ of the corn which they collected, in order to stop its vegetation, and to store it up for winter provision. †

Our poets, drawing their information from

* Shaw, Gen. Zool. vol. vi. pt. 2. p. 352.

†This opinion of Pliny (1. xi. c. 30.) was considered a fiction by Ray, as far back as 1691. (Ray's Wisdom of God, p. 99.)

these fabulous sources, or sheltering themselves under classical authority, have followed each other in the self-same track of error, and by the introduction of these faults have disfigured many of their beautiful descriptions and illustrations of industry, sagacity, and foresight.

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.

MILTON. Par. Lost, b. vii. 1. 484.

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.
PRIOR. Poems: Solomon.

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 :

* Strictly speaking, the Formica fuliginosa is the emmet. Cuvier, vol. xv. p. 444.