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 between 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 18 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 fort 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 be sometimes seen 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 that 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 fort of green fly, that does a great deal of mischief among the flowers, and which curls up the leaves of peach and pear trees; and these are surrounded with a fort 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 exceedingly 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 housetops, 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 laden, 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 fort 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 aurelia 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 aurelia 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 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 foresight 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 busied in consulting the safety, not of themselves, but of the eggs or these larger bodies including 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 vermicules together in their confusion; but, as soon as the danger is over, they carefully separate them, and place each fort 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 greatest 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 sawdust all round the stump of it. Some anoint the tree with tar, which has the same effect. See Ant.

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 lee-side 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 CVIII. fig. 1. A, The ants nest; B, The tubular passage, made of the same materials.

Formica Leo, the Ant lion, in zoology, an insect so called from its devouring great numbers of ants. It is the caterpillar or worm of a fly much resembling the libelle or dragon-flies; and feeds chiefly upon ants, from which property it derives its name.

It is somewhat of the nature of the spider in its way of taking its prey, its manner of spinning, and the figure and softness of its body. It has, in its general figure, somewhat of the appearance of the millipede or wood-louse, so that some have mistaken it at first sight for that animal. It is of a dirty greyish colour, marked with some black spots; and these are also composed of many points when viewed with a microscope; which make it resemble a hedge-hog or porcupine. Its body is composed of several rings, and has thence a wrinkled look. It has six legs, four are joined to the breast, and the other two to a longer part, which may be taken for its neck. Its head is small and flat, and it has two remarkable horns; these are about a sixth part of an inch long, and as thick as a hair; they are hard, hollow, and hooked at the end like the claws of a cat. At the origin of each of these horns, it has a clear and bright black eye, which sees very distinctly, and gives the creature notice to escape on sight of the smallest object.—This creature is not able to hunt after its prey, nor to destroy large insects; it can only draw into its snares such as come near its habitation, and of these very few are such as he can manage: all the winged kind are able to escape by flight; and the beetle kinds, and others that have hard shells upon their bodies, are of no use to him, as his horns cannot pierce them. The smallness of the ant, and its want of wings, make it the destined prey of this devourer. The manner in which he catches his prey is as follows.

He usually encamps under an old wall, that he may be sheltered from the injuries of the weather; and he always chooses a place where the soil is composed of a fine dry sand. In this he makes a pit of the shape of a funnel, or an inverted hollow cone. If he intends the pit to be but small, he thrusts down his hinder part into the sand, and by degrees plunges himself backward into it; and when he has got to a certain depth, he tosses out the loose sand which has run down with his head, artfully throwing it off beyond the edges of his pit. Thus he lies at the bottom of a small hollow, which is widest at the top, and comes sloping down to his body.

But if he is to make a larger pit, more pains are required to bring it to perfection. He first traces, in the surface of the sand, a large circle, which is the erected base or mouth of the pit he is to make in form of an inverted cone. He then buries himself in the sand near the edge of this circle, and carefully throws up the sand above him, with his head tossing it out beyond the circumference of the circle. Thus he continues his work, running down backwards in a spiral line all the way, and carefully throwing off the sand from above him, till he is come to the place of his rest, which is the point or reverted apex of the hollow cone he has formed by his passage. The length of his neck, and the flatness of his head, gives him a power of using the whole as a spade, and throwing off the sand with great ease; and his strength in this part is so great, that he is able to throw off a quantity of it to fix inches distance. This is a power he exerts oftener, however, in throwing away the remains of the animals he has fed upon, that his den may not become frightful to others of the same species, by seeing their fellow carcasses about it.

When he has finished his pit, he buries himself at the bottom of it among the sand, leaving no part above ground but the tips of his two horns, which he expands to the two sides of the pit. In this condition he lies and waits for his prey, and never comes up afterwards. When an ant, or any other such creature, chances to walk over the edges of his pit, its steps throw down a little of the sand, which naturally running down to the bottom of the pit, gives the enemy notice of his prey; he then tosses up the sand which covers his head, to bury the ant, and bring him down with its returning force to the bottom; and as one such attempt cannot be sufficient to prevent the ant's escape, he throws more and more sand upon him, till he by degrees brings him down. All the endeavours of the ant to escape, when once it is within the verge of the pit, are in vain; for, as it attempts to climb, the sand runs away from under its feet, and it sinks the lower for every attempt. This motion of the sand also informs the enemy where it is, and directs him to throw up more sand in the right place; which it does, till the poor ant falls to the bottom between its horns. It then plunges their points deep into the ant's body; and having sucked out all the juice out of the prey, it throws out the empty skin as far from the hole as it can. This done, it mounts up the edges of its pit, and if it has suffered any injury, repairs it with great care, and immediately buries itself again in the centre, to wait for another meal. The horns of this creature are its only organs for receiving nourishment; it never brings any animal which it has feized near to its head, but always holds it it at the tip of the horns. They therefore plainly serve as syringes, to draw into its stomach the juices of the bodies of the insects it feeds upon; neither is there any mouth or trunk, or any other organ to be discovered about its head, which could serve to the purpose of eating; the head seeming only intended for throwing away the sand in forming the pit. The horns of this animal being so necessary to its life, nature has provided for the restoring them in case of accidents; and, if cut off, they are found to grow again.

The food this creature procures by its pit can be but little; and as it has no power of catching its prey any other way, its motion being only backwards, and that slowly, and by small spaces at a time, some people have believed its catching now and then an ant by this means was rather for diversion than hunger. But tho' the formica leo will live a long time without food, and even pass through all its changes when shut up in a box, yet it is always ready to eat when food is offered it; it always appears starved and small when kept thus; and if a fly is given it in this hungry state, it will so suck out all its juices, that the shell remaining may be rubbed to powder between the fingers, while the body of the creature that has sucked it appears remarkably swelled and distended; so that it is plain that the juices of the prey are conveyed into the body of the creature; though it is not easy to see by what means, the horns not appearing to have any perforation.

When the formica leo has lived a proper time in this state, it leaves its pit, and is only seen drawing lines and traces on the surface of the sand. After this it buries itself under the surface; and there incloses itself in a fine web, in which it is to pass its transformation into the winged state. This case is made of a sort of silk which the creature spins in the manner of the spider, and of a quantity of the grains of sand cemented together by a glutinous humour which flows from its pores. This case, however, would be too harsh and coarse for the body of the creature, and therefore it serves only for the outer covering to defend it from injuries; the creature spinning one of pure and incomparably fine silk, of a beautiful pearl colour, within it, which covers its whole body.

When the creature has lain some time in this case, it throws off its outer skin, with the eyes, the horns, and every other part necessary to its life before, and becomes an oblong nymph, in which a careful eye may trace the form of the fly into which it is to be transformed. There may be seen, through its transparent covering, new eyes, new horns, wings, and all the other parts of the animal in its perfect state. This nymph makes its way about half out of the shell, and remains in this condition, but without farther life or motion, till the perfect fly makes its way out at a slit in the back. In this last state it much resembles the libelle or dragon-flies common about our waters. The male couples with the female in this state only; and M. Poupart, to whom the world is obliged for this curious description, is of opinion that the females lay only one egg; but this is very different from the course of nature in the other animals of the same class.

When this insect forms its pit in a bed of pure sand, it is made and repaired with great ease; but where it meets with other substances among the sand, the labour becomes greatly the more embarrassing. If, for instance, when the creature has half-formed its pit, and then comes to a stone of some moderate size, it does not defer the work for this, but goes on, intending to remove that impediment at last. When the pit is finished, the creature crawls backward up the side of the place where the stone is, and getting its backside under it, takes great pains and time to get it on a true poise, and then begins to crawl backward with it up the edge to the top of the pit, to get it out of the way. It is a very common thing to see a formica-leo in this manner labouring at a stone four times as big as its own body; and, as it can only move backward, and the poise is hard to keep, especially up a slope of such crumbly matter as sand, which moulders away from under its feet, and necessarily alters the position of its body, the stone very frequently falls down when near the verge, and then it is sure to roll to the bottom. In this case the animal attacks it again in the same way, and often is not discouraged by five or six miscarriages of this kind, but, after all, attempts again, and at length gets over the verge of the place. When it has done this, it does not leave it there, lest it should roll in again; but is always at the pains of pushing it farther on, till it has removed it to a necessary distance from the edge of the pit.

The common formica-leo moves only backward; but Mr Rouet has observed a species which moves forward in the common way of other animals, and makes no pit of this kind to entrap its prey, but seizes other insects by force.