Page:Willich, A. F. M. - The Domestic Encyclopædia (Vol. 1, 1802).djvu/96

72] appears as if it were almost cut through the body. The females and the neuters, or working ants, which have no sexual characteristics, are furnished with a secret sting; and both the males and females have wings, but the neuters have none. There are eighteen species, which are in general distinguished by their colours.

These insects cohabit in numerous parties, and maintain a sort of republic, not unlike that of the. Their nests are in the form of an oblong square, and contain paths which lead to different magazines. Their method of constructing these habitations is truly wonderful. Some of the ants are employed in making the ground firm, by mixing it with a kind of glue, to prevent its crumbling, and falling upon them: others may be seen gathering several twigs, which they use for rafters, by placing them over the paths to support the covering: they lay others across, and upon these, rushes, weeds, and dried grass, which they form into a double declivity, and thus conduct the water from their magazine.

For provisions they secure every thing which, to them, is eatable, and we may often observe one loaded with a dead fly, sometimes several together with the carcass of a may-bug, or other large insect; and, if they cannot transport it, they consume part of it upon the spot, at least so much as may reduce it to a bulk adequate to their strength. They lay up hoards of wheat and other corn; and, for fear it should sprout from the moisture of their subterraneous cells, they gnaw off the end which would produce the blade. It is remarkable, that if one ant meets another which is loaded, it always gives way, or will help it, if it be over-burthened. Indeed, the strength of this little animal is astonishing, as one of them will frequently drag a burthen many times heavier than itself!

On depriving a mouse or other small animal of its skin, and placing it on an ant-hill, in a little box, perforated in several parts, so as to admit a free passage for the ants, it will be found, in a few days, converted into the most perfect skeleton.

The ant deposits her eggs in the manner of the common flies, and from these eggs are hatched the larvæ, a sort of small maggots, or worms without legs; which, after a short time, change into large white aurelia, or chrysalids, usually called ant's eggs.

Although ants are considered as injurious to husbandry, by making their hills, and impairing the grass upon pasture land, yet they are unjustly reproached with damaging fruit-trees. In Switzerland, they are made subservient to the destruction of caterpillars, by hanging a pouch filled with ants upon a tree, whence they are suffered to make their escape, through an aperture, and over-run all its branches, without being able to reach the ground, as the trunk has been previously smeared with wet clay, or soft pitch, in consequence of which, impelled by hunger, they fall upon the caterpillars, and devour them.

Ants have also been successfully used in medicine. By distillation, they afford an acid liquor, which, when mixed with brandy, is by many considered as a strengthening nervous cordial; they have also been added to warm baths, when used for the gout and sprained limbs. We