or the ANT, in zoology; a genus of Formica insects belonging to the order of hymenoptera, the characters of which are these: There is a small scale plate betwixt the breast and belly; and the joint is so deep, CXCVI, that the animal appears as if it were almost cut thro' 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 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 them. 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 everything 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 sort of green fly*, that does a great deal of mischief among the flowers, and this which curls 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 subterranean 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. It is remarkable, that if one ant meets another that is loaded, it always gives way to let it pass freely; or will help it if it be overburdened.

The ant lays 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; 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 aurelie or chrysalids, 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 aureliae of another.

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 those larger bodies inclosing 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 verminics 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. All human precautions have not hitherto been able to supply that degree of warmth and minute attention which the ants put in practice to forward the infant of their last metamorphosis. The insect, issuing forth to a new life, tears its white transparent veil; it is then a real ant, destitute of wings, if it has no sex; winged, if it be male or female, always to be known by a small erect scale placed on the thread which connects the body and thorax. Ants are seen in their amours in the air. The males, who are much smaller, seldom frequent the common habitation: but the females much larger, repair to it to deposit their eggs, which is all the labour they undergo; the winter's cold destroys them. As to the males, it is uncertain whether they fall victims to the severity of winter, or are made over to the rage of the labouring ants. These last pass the winter in a torpid state, as some other insects do, till spring restores them to their wonted activity: they have therefore no stores for winter, no consumption of provisions. What are commonly sold in markets for ant's eggs are grubs newly hatched, of which pheasants, nightingales, and partridges, are very fond. The chief enemies to ants are the formicaleo, magpies, and some other birds and beasts.

In the hotter countries, as Italy, Spain, and the West Indies, ants are the greatest pest of the fields. Trees, which they are said to injure greatly, 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. But whatever harm they may do in pasture-lands, by making up hills for their habitation and impairing or drying up the grass, their damaging fruit-trees appears to be an unjust reproach. On the contrary, in Switzerland they are made subservient to the destruction of caterpillars. This is done Formica by hanging a pouch filled with ants upon a tree; and they, making their escape through an aperture contrived for purpose, run over the tree without being able to reach down to the ground, because care has been previously taken to befoul the foot of the tree with wet clay or soft pitch; in consequence of which, compelled by hunger, they fall upon the caterpillars and devour them. People pretend to say, that ants, taken inwardly, give a spring to the urinary ducts and to the organs of generation. The red colour which they communicate to blue paper, when crushed upon it, proves that they contain an acid (see Chemistry, p. 297.)

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 CXCVI. A, The ants nest; B, The tubular passage, made of the same materials.

As to those insects called white ants, which abound in Africa and the East Indies, they belong to a different genus; for which see the article Termites.