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A793.1 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 1. Text

claws, and then unfolds his slender worm-like tongue, (which is more than two feet long, and wet with saliva,) and when covered with ants draws it back into his mouth and swallows thousands of them alive, renewing the operation till no more are to be found. He also climbs trees in search of wood-lice and wild honey. Bats, as every one knows, are always flitting about in summer evenings, hawking for insects: and the Lemur and monkeys will also eat them. Insects likewise afford a favourite kind

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A793.1 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 1. Text

larv and pup , which Swammerdam informs us were sold at market in his time to feed various kinds of birds a. Dr. Clarke also mentions having seen them, as well as the ants themselves, exposed to sale in the market at Moscow as a food for nightingales b. Latreille tells us that singing birds are fed in France with the larv of Formica rufa. But the Linnean order of Passeres affords the greatest Number of insectivorus birds; indeed almost all the species of this order, except perhaps the Columb

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A793.1 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 1. Text

of some of the Orchide like birds on a limed twig: (Sprengel Entdecktes, Geheimniss, 21 ) and ants are rot unfrequently detained in the milky juice which the touch of even their light feet causes to exude from the of the common garden lettuce. Ann. of Bot. ii. 590. [page] 29

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A793.1 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 1. Text

amends for the meagerness of the last, as it contains the white ant tribe (Termes), which, in return for the mischief it does at certain times, affords an abundant supply of food to some of the African nations. The Hottentots eat them boiled and raw, and soon get into good condition upon this foode. K nig, quoted by Smeathman, says that in some parts of the East Indies the natives make two holes in the nests of the white ants, one to the windward and the other to the leeward, placing at the latter

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A793.1 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 1. Text

purge; wasps as diuretics; lady-birds for the colic and measles; the cockchafer for the bite of a mad dog and the plague; and ants and their acid I should have loudly praised as incomparable against leprosy and deafness, as strengthening the memory, and giving vigour and animation to the whole bodily framea. In short, I could have easily added to the miserably meager list of modern pharmacop ias, a catalogue of approved insect-remedies for every disease and evil that flesh is heir to! But

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A793.1 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 1. Text

positing them, but attend upon their young, when excluded, with an affectionate assiduity equal to any thing exhibited amongst the larger animals, and in the highest degree interesting. Of this description are some solitary insects, as several species of the Linnean genus Sphex, earwigs, field-bugs, and spiders: and those insects which live in societies, namely, ants, bees, wasps, and Termites: the most striking traits of whose history these respects I shall endeavour to lay before you. you

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A793.1 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 1. Text

whole nest in piecesa. I must now conduct you to a hasty survey of those insects which live together in societies and fabricate dwellings for the community, such as ants, wasps, bees, humble-bees, and termites, whose great, object (sometimes combined indeed with the storing up of a storing of a stock of winter provisions for themselves) is the nutrition and education of their young. Of the proceedings of many of these insects we know comparatively nothing. There are, it is likely, some hundreds

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A793.1 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 1. Text

different and peculiar construction. The constitution of these societies is probably as various as the exterior forms of their nests, and their habits possibly curious in the highest degree; yet our knowledge is almost confined to the economy of the hive-bee and of some species of humble-bees. The same may be said of wasps, ants, and termites, of which, though there is a vast variety of different kinds, we are acquainted with the history of but a very few. You will not therefore expect more

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A793.1 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 1. Text

, caressing them; and at length, when they rise into the air and disappear, seeming to linger for some seconds over the footsteps of these favoured beings, of whom they have taken such exemplary care, whom they will never behold againb. In the above account, exclusive of the bare fact of their laying the eggs, no mention is made of the female ants, the real parents of the republic. You are not from this to suppose that they never feel the influence of this divine principle of love for their offspring

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A793.1 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 1. Text

both states, are chiefly of the remaining orders. I have said that insects, like other animals, draw their subsistence from the vegetable or animal kingdoms. But I ought not to omit noticing that some authors have conceived that several species feed upon mineral substances. Not to dwell upon Barchewitz's idle tale of East Indian ants which eat ironb, or on the stone-eating caterpillars recorded in the Memoirs of the French Academyc, which are now known to erode the walls on which they are found

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A793.1 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 1. Text

erroneously supposed to be the food of many Testacea, though in fact a mere extraneous substance. The majority of insects, either imbibing their food in a liquid state, or feeding on succulent substances, require no aqueous fluid for diluting it. Water, however, is essential to bees, ants, and some other tribes, which drink it with avidity; as well as in warm climates to many Lepidoptera, which are there chiefly taken in court yards, near the margins of drains, c. Even some larv which feed upon

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A793.1 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 1. Text

scarcely extract a drop of moisture: and will yet have its body as well filled with fluids as that of a leaf-fed caterpillar. By far the greater part of insects always feed themselves. The young however of those which live in societies, as the hive- and humble-bees, wasps, ants, c, are fed by the older inhabitants of the community, which also frequently feed each other. Many of these last insects are distinguished from the majority of their race, which live from day to day and take no thought for

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A793.1 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 1. Text

, particularly ants, but at the first view it seems impossible that it should ever secure a single meal. Not only is its pace slow, a PLATE XIX. FIG. 8. [page] 43

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A793.1 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 1. Text

are equally acceptable to it, as the winged tribe can easily take flight from its pit should they chance to fall into it, its prey consists chiefly of apterous species, of which ants form by far the largest portion, with occasionally an unwary spider or wood-louse. When the full period of its growth is attained it retires under the sand; spins with its anus a silken cocoon; remains a chrysalis a few weeks; and then breaks forth a four-winged insect resembling, as before observed, the dragon-fly

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A793.1 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 1. Text

them by springing a flattish arch or roof from one side to the other. Nothing can be a more interesting spectacle than one of these cities while building. In one place vertical walls form the outline, which communicate with different corridors by openings made in the masonry; in another we see a true saloon whose vaults are supported by numerous pillars; and further on are the cross ways or squares where several streets meet, and whose roofs, though often more than two inches across, the ants

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A793.2 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 2. Text

in full motion in the morning immediately after the evaporation of the dew; and if no dew has fallen, they appear as soon as the sun imparts his genial warmth. At first some are seen running about like messengers among the reposing swarms, which are lying partly compressed upon the ground, at the side of small eminences, and partly attached to tall plants and shrubs. Shortly after the whole body begins to move forward in one direction and with little deviation. They resemble a swarm of ants

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A793.2 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 2. Text

of the social Hymenoptera, the ants, the wasps, and the humble-bees with whom the females lay the first foundations of the colonies, unassisted by any neuters; but in the swarms of the hive-bee an election may, perhaps, in some instances, be said to take place. b VOL. I. 2d Ed. 512. D 2 [page] 3

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A793.2 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 2. Text

they are a See VOL. I. 2d Ed. 513. b Gould's Account of English Ants, 22. c The late John Hunter dissected two young queens. In the abdomen he found two ovaries, consisting of many hundred oviducts, each containing innumerable eggs. [page] 3

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A793.2 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 2. Text

anonymous author before alluded to, who observed the Ceylon white ants, says, that such was the size of the masses, which were tempered with a strong gluten, that they adhered though laid on the upper part of the breach. [page] 4

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A793.2 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 2. Text

then recognised to be that of white ants; yet he was surprised at seeing none of their hills or covered ways. Following the noise, to his great astonishment and delight he saw an army of these creatures emerging from a hole in the ground; their number was prodigious, and they marched with the utmost celerity. When they had proceeded about a yard they divided into two columns, chiefly composed of labourers, about fifteen abreast, following each other in close order, and going straight forward