Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/444

422 and confusion; and all the winged ants, agitated by some violent impulse, are leaving their homes, and, bent on emigration, swarm by myriads in the air, to the great emolument of the hirundines, which fare luxuriously. Those that escape the swallows return no more to their nests, but looking out for fresh settlements, lay a foundation for future colonies. All the females at this time are pregnant; the males that escape being eaten, wander away and die.

October 2nd.—Flying-ants, male and female, usually swarm and migrate on hot sunny days in August and September: but this day a vast emigration took place in my garden, and myriads came forth, in appearance from the drain which goes under the fruit-wall, filling the air and the adjoining trees and shrubs with their numbers. The females were full of eggs. This late swarming is probably owing to the backward wet season. The day following, not one flying ant was to be seen.

Horse-ants travel home to their nests laden with flies which they have caught, and the aureliæ of smaller ants, which they seize by violence.—. In my "Naturalist's Calendar" for the year 1777, on September 6th, I find the following note to the article Flying Ants.

I saw a prodigious swarm of these ants flying about the top of some tall elm-trees (close by my house); some were continually dropping to the ground, as if from the trees, and others rising up from the ground; many of them were joined together in copulation; and I imagine their life is but short, for as soon as produced from the egg by the heat of the sun, they propagate their species, and soon after perish. They were black, somewhat like the small black ant, and had four wings. I saw also, at another place, a large sort, which were yellowish. On the 8th September, 1785, I again observed the same circumstance of a vast number of these insects flying near the tops of the elms and dropping to the ground.

On the 2nd March, 1777, I saw great numbers of ants come out of the ground.—.