or the Ant, in zoology, a genus of insects belonging to the order of hymenoptera, the characters of which are these: There is a small scale betwixt the breast and belly, and the joint is so deep that the animal 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 hidden sting; and both the males and females have wings, but the neuters have none. There are eighteen species, most of them distinguished by their colours.

These insects keep together in companies like the bees, and maintain a sort of republic. Their nest is not exactly square, but longer one way than the other; and in it there are a sort of paths, which lead to different magazines. Some of the ants are employed in making the ground firm, by mixing it with a sort of glue, for fear it should crumble, and fall down upon their heads. They may sometimes seem to gather several twigs, which serve them for rafters, which they place over the paths, to support the covering; they lay others across them, and upon them rushes, weeds, and dried grass, which they heap up into a double declivity, which serves to turn off the water from their magazines. Some of these serve to lay up their provisions in, and in others they lay their eggs.

As for the provisions, they lay up every thing that is fit for them to eat; and you may often see one loaded with pippin, or grain of fruit, another with a dead fly, and several together with the carcass of a may-bug, or other insect. If they meet with any they cannot bring away, they eat it upon the spot, or at least so much of it, as may reduce it to a bulk small enough for them to carry. They do not run about where they please, at all adventures: for some of them are sent abroad to make discoveries; and if they bring back news they have met with a pear, or a sugar-loaf, or a pot of sweetmeats, they will run from the bottom of the garden, as high as the third story of a house, to come at it. They all follow each other in the same path, without wandering to the right or the left; but in the fields they are more at their liberty, and are allowed to run about in search of game. There is a sort of green fly, that does a great deal of mischief among the flowers, and which curl up the leaves of peach and pear trees; and these are surrounded with a sort of glue, or honey, which the ants hunt after very greedily; for they touch neither the plant nor the flies themselves.

Next to this, their greatest passion is to lay up hoards of wheat, and other corn; and for fear the corn should sprout by the moisture of the subterraneous cells, they gnaw off the end which would produce the blade. The ants are often seen pushing along grains of wheat, or barley, much larger than themselves.

In Africa, and particularly in Guinea, the ants are exceeding troublesome, and do a great deal of mischief. They make their nests of earth in the fields, twice as high as a man; besides which they build large nests in high trees, from which places they advance in such prodigious swarms to the houses, that they frequently oblige the inhabitants to quit their beds in the night-time. They will sometimes attack a living sheep, which in a night's time they will reduce to a perfect skeleton, leaving not the least thing except the bones. It is common for them to serve domestic fowls in the same manner, and even the rats themselves cannot escape them. If you place a worm or a beetle where only one or two ants are, they will immediately depart, and bring with them above an hundred; after which they seize their prey, and march off with it in good order. These ants are of various sorts, some great, others small, some black, and others red; the sting of this last is very painful, and causes an inflammation; the white are as transparent as crystal, and have such strong teeth, that in a night's time they will eat their way through a thick wooden chest, and make it as full of holes as if it had been penetrated by hail-shot.

There are also several sorts of ants in the East Indies, whose numbers are prodigious: some of them are exceeding large, and of a ruddy colour, inclining to black; and some have wings, but others have none. They are very pernicious to the fruits of the earth, and do a great deal of mischief in houses, unless great care is taken to prevent them. It is remarkable, that if one ant meets another that is loaded, it always gives way to let it pass freely.

The ant lays eggs in the manner of the common flies, and from these eggs are hatched a sort of small maggots or worms without legs: these are sharp at one end and blunt at the other; and are white, but so transparent, that the intestines are seen through the skin. These, after a short time, change into large white aureliae, which are what are usually called ants' eggs. That end which is to be the tail is the largest, and that which is the head is somewhat transparent.

The ants move these about at pleasure with their forceps. It is well known, that when a nest of these creatures is disturbed and the aureliae scattered about, the ants are at infinite pains to get together all that are unhurt, and make a nest for them again: nay, any ants will do this, and those of one nest will often take care of the aureliae of another.

The affection of the ant for its offspring is amazing. They carry the young worms about in their mouths, that nothing may injure them; and when the earth earth of the nest is dry, they carry them down to a greater depth, but when wet they bring them to the surface, that they may not be injured by the damps.

The common ant builds only with small pieces of dry earth, and there is always found a vast quantity either of eggs, worms, or aureliae, at the bottom of the nest. The aureliae are covered only with a thin skin; and when carefully opened, they show the worm perfect, and in its several stages of perfection.

The forecast of ants in providing against the winter is a mistake. They are supposed not to eat in the winter, but to spend that season, like dormice, and many other sorts of animals, in a state of sleep. What confirms this is, that they have been observed, as the cold draws on in the autumn, to move very heavily, and in the vintage-time they can hardly stir at all; so that the provision they make seems intended not for themselves, but for their young.

The care these creatures take of their offspring is remarkable. Whenever a hill is disturbed, all the ants are found buried in consulting the safety, not of themselves, but of the eggs or these larger bodies enclosing the maggot or young ant; they carry these down any way so as to get them out of sight, and will do this over and over as often as they are disturbed.

They carry away the eggs and vermicles together in their confusion; but as soon as the danger is over, they carefully separate them, and place each sort in parcels by themselves under shelter of different kinds, and at various depths, according to the different degrees of warmth and coverture the different states require.

In the warm season of the year, they every morning bring up the eggs, as they are usually called, to the surface, or nearly so; and from ten in the forenoon to five in the afternoon or thereabouts, all these will be found just under the surface; and if the hills be examined toward eight in the evening, they will be found to have carried them all down; and if rainy weather be coming on, it will be necessary to dig a foot deep or more, in order to find them.

These little creatures are very troublesome in gardens, and in pasture-lands; as well by feeding on the fruit, as by making up hills for their habitation. In the hotter countries, as Italy, Spain, and the West Indies, ants are the great pest of the fields. Trees may be preserved from them by encompassing the stem, for four fingers breadth, with a roll of wool, newly pulled from the sheep's belly; or by laying saw-dust all round the stump of it. Some anoint the tree with tar, which has the same effect.

The large, black, winged ants of America, to avoid the great rains which fall there at particular seasons, make to themselves large nests on trees, with a covered way for them to go up and down on the leeside of the tree. These nests are roundish on the outside, made of light brown earth, plastered smooth. They are larger than a bushel; and in the inside are many sinuous caverns or lodgings communicating with one another. See Plate LXXX. fig. 1. A, The ants nest; B, The tubular passage, made of the same materials.

in medicine, a callous sort of wart.