On The Beauties, Harmonies, And Sublimities Of Nature; With Notes, Commentaries, And Illustrations - Vol II (Paperback)

ON THE BEAUTIES, HARMONIES, AND SUBLIMITIES NATURE. CHAPTER II. ANTS. WITH bees we may associate ANTS, so variously treated of by Lewenhoek, Swammerdam, Linnaeus, Geoffrey de Geer, Bonnet, Latreille, and Huber. ANTS, like bees, are divided into males, females, and neuter or rather females, who, being barren, from their sexual organs not being developed, are labourers for the benefit of the entire community. Like those of bees, the males and females of ants seem to have no other duties, than just to live and to procreate. The barren ones provide food, construct the habitations, nurture the young, and guard the citadel. In building they exhibit much ingenuity every one seem ing quot to follow his own fancy.quot Both the male and the female have wings and when the heat has arisen to a cer tain height, they issue from their habitations, escorted by the labourers, who offer them food during the first stage of their emigration. Then the males and females take flight during which the act of fecundation is frequently performing. When the females are impregnated, the males are left to themselves and being unprovided with food, and incapable of procuring it, they soon die of want while the females pursue their course to some little distance, and seek out habitations where, finding themselves destitute of labourers, they begin to work, in order to procure selves. food for them Those few females, which remain behind in the immediate neighbourhood, having been impregnated in their nests, are forcibly taken back by the labourers, who deprive them of their wings, feed them, and attend them till they have depo sited their eggs. Ants are totally unacquainted with the economy of hoarding. They are almostentirely carnivorous living upon other insects, and portions of other animal sub stances and on the nutritious juices of gall insects and kermes also on exudations from several species of the aphis, which the labourers take home for the males and females, that do not work. This secretion of the aphis is supposed to be destined, not only for its own subsistence, but for that of ants for the aphis is always in the neighbourhood of ant colonies and they become torpid precisely at the same tem perature. Some species of ants even collect the eggs of the aphis, and bestow upon them the same care, they do upon those of their own species. They also construct habitations for them, at a small distance from their own nests where they go to them, and rob them of their secretions, whenever they are in want. These secretions the aphis yields with the same willingness and docility, that sheep and cows give down their milk. Ants have parental and filial affections friendly disposi tions and social sympathies and when any of the impreg- The flights of ants are sometimes very wonderful De over his. lands and neighbourhood, vol. iv. .Ml. quot. Foe records one nated females die, they lick their bodies for several days, and pay them all manner of attention, as if they thought they could restore them to life. But to balance these moral per fections, they wage war not only against other insects, but small quadrupeds and, like bees, against communities of their own species. Some species of ants even carry on war for the sake of making slaves of their enemies...