ORDER V. HYMENOPTERA.

Uroceridæ—Sirex.

In a work called “Ephemerides des curieux de la nature,” is an observation apparently relative to this family of insects, which, if true, would be very extraordinary indeed. It is there said, that in the town of Czierck and its environs, there were seen in 1679 some unknown winged insects which, with their stings, mortally wounded both men and beasts. They fell abruptly upon men without provocation, and attached themselves to the naked parts of the body: the sting was immediately followed by a hard tumor, and if care was not taken of the wound within the first three hours, by hastily extracting the poison from it, the patient died in a few days after. These insects killed five and thirty men in this diocese, and a great number of oxen and horses. Toward the end of September, the winds brought some of them into a small town on the confines of Silesia and Poland; but they were so feeble on account of the cold, that they did but little mischief there. Eight days after, they all disappeared. These animals have all of them four wings, six feet, and carry under the belly a long sting provided with a sheath, which opens and separates in two. They make a very sharp noise in attacking men. Some of them are ornamented with yellow circles (Sirex gigas, or S. fusicornis? M. Latreille), and others are similar to them in all respects, but they have the back altogether black, and their stings are more venomous (S. spectrum or juvencus?). The author of these observations gives an extended description of the species with the yellow circles, which he accompanies with figures, in which the character of Sirex may be clearly distinguished.477

Cynipidæ—Gall-flies.

In the spring of 1694, some Galls hung down like chains upon the oaks in Germany, and the common people, who had never observed them before, imagined them to be magical knots.478

A very old and common superstition is, that every oak-apple contains either a maggot, a fly, or a spider: the first foretelling famine, the second war, and the third, the spider, pestilence. Matthiolus gravely affirms this conceit to be true;479 and the learned Sir Thomas Browne, in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, has thought it worth his while, with much gravity, to explode it. He, however, while combating one popular error, falls himself into another, for want of that philosophical knowledge of insects which later times have succeeded in obtaining. We pass this by, and hurry to his conclusion: “We confess the opinion may hold some verity in analogy, or emblematical phancy; for pestilence is properly signified by the spider, whereof some kinds are of a very venomous nature: famine by maggots, which destroy the fruits of the earth; and war not improperly by the fly, if we rest in the phancy of Homer, who compares the valiant Grecian unto a fly. Some verity it may also have in itself, as truly declaring the corruptive constitution in the present sap and nutrimental juice of the tree; and may consequently discover the disposition of the year according to the plenty or kinds of those productions; for if the putrefying juices of bodies bring forth plenty of flies and maggots, they give forth testimony of common corruption, and declare that the elements are full of the seeds of putrefaction, as the great number of caterpillars, gnats, and ordinary insects do also declare. If they run into spiders, they give signs of higher putrefaction, as plenty of vipers and scorpions are confessed to do; the putrefying materials producing animals of higher mischief according to the advance and higher strain of corruption.”480

Moufet says: “In oak acorns and spongy apples sometimes worms breed, and astrologers presage that year to be likely to produce a great famine and dearth.… It is strange that Ringelbergius writes, lib. de experiment, that these worms may be fed to be as big as a serpent, with sheep’s milk; yet Cardanus confirms the same, and shewes the way to feed them, Lib. de rer. varietat.”481

There is a very curious operation performed at the present day in the Levant with one of these Gall-flies, which is termed caprification. The object of it is to hasten the maturity of figs; and the species employed for that purpose is the Cynips ficus caricæ, or Cynips psenes of Linnæus; it consists in placing on a fig-tree, which does not produce flowers or early figs, some of these last strung together with a thread. The insects which issue from them, full of fecundating dust, introduce themselves through the eye into the interior of the second figs, fecundate by this means all the grains, and provoke the ripening of the fruit.

This operation, of which some authors have spoken with admiration, appeared to Hasselquist and Olivier, both competent observers, who have been on the spot, to be of no advantage whatsoever in fertilizing the fig;482 and scientific men of the present day generally hold that it cannot be of any utility, for each fig contains some small flowers toward the eye, capable of fecundating all the female flowers in the interior, and moreover this fruit will grow, ripen, and become excellent to eat even when the grains are not fecundated.483

A curious kind of gall, produced on the rose-trees by the Cynips rosæ, which is known by the name of Bedeguar, has been placed among the remedies which may be successfully employed against diarrhœa and dysentery, and useful in cases of scurvy, stone, and worms.484

The galls of commerce, commonly called Nut-galls, are found on the Quercus infectoria, a species of oak growing in the Levant, and are produced by the Cynips Gallæ tinctorum. When gathered before the insects quit them, the nut-galls contain more astringent matter, and are then known as Black, Blue, or Green-galls. When the insects 485

The gall of the field cirsium formerly enjoyed a very great reputation, for it was considered, when carried simply in the pocket, as a sovereign remedy against hemorrhages. It, no doubt, owed this virtue to its resemblance to the principal sign of this disease, the swelling of the vein.486

The galls of the ground-ivy, produced by the Cynips glecome, have been eaten as food in France; they have an agreeable taste, and to a high degree the odor of the plant which bears them. Reaumur, however, is doubtful whether they will ever rank with good fruits.487

The galls of the sage (Salvia pomifera, S. triloba, and S. officinalis), which are very juicy, like apples, and crowned with rudiments of leaves resembling the calyx of that fruit, are gathered every year, as an article of food, by the inhabitants of the Island of Crete. This is the statement of Poumefort. Olivier confirms it, and adds: They are esteemed in the Levant for their aromatic and acid flavor, especially when prepared with honey and sugar, and form a considerable article of commerce from Scio to Constantinople, where they are regularly exposed in the market.488

The celebrated “Dead Sea Fruits,” often called Poma insana, or Mad-apples, Mala Sodomitica, etc., which have given rise to great controversy among Oriental scholars and Biblical commentators, are produced by the Cynips insana on the low oaks (Quercus infectoria) growing on the borders of the Dead Sea.489

Formicidæ—Ants.

Herodotus, who wrote in the fifth century before the birth of Christ, tells the following fabulous story without the slightest trace of diffidence or disbelief: There are other Indians bordering on the City of Caspatyrus and the country of Pactyica, settled northward of the other Indians, whose mode of life resembles that of the Bactrians. They are the most warlike of the Indians, and these are they who are sent to procure the gold; for near this part is a desert by reason of the sand. In this desert then, and in the sand, there are Ants in size somewhat less indeed than dogs, but larger than foxes. Some of them are in the possession of the King of the Persians, which were taken there. These Ants, forming their habitations under ground, heap up the sand as the Ants in Greece do, and in the same manner; and they are very like them in shape. The sand that is heaped up is mixed with gold. The Indians, therefore, go to the desert to get this sand, each man having three camels, on either side a male one harnessed to draw by the side, and a female in the middle; this last the man mounts himself, having taken care to yoke one that has been separated from her young as recently as possible; for camels are not inferior to horses in swiftness, and are much better able to carry burdens.… The Indians then, adopting such a plan and such a method of harnessing, set out for the gold, having before calculated the time, so as to be engaged in their plunder during the hottest part of the day, for during the heat the Ants hide themselves under ground.… When the Indians arrive at the spot, having sacks with them, they fill these with the sand, and return with all possible expedition; for the Ants, as the Persians say, immediately discovering them by the smell, pursue them, and they are equaled in swiftness by no other animal, so that if the Indians did not get the start of them while the Ants were assembling, not a man of them could be saved. Now the male camels (for they are inferior in speed to the females) slacken their pace, dragging on, not both equally; but the females, mindful of the young they have left, do not slacken their pace. Thus the Indians, as the Persians say, obtain the greatest part of their gold.490

Concerning these remarkable Ants, Strabo and Arrian have preserved the statement of Megasthenes, who traveled in India about two centuries later than the time of Herodotus. As given by Strabo, who is somewhat more particular in his story than Arrian, it is as follows: Megasthenes, speaking of the Myrmeces (or Ants), says, among the Derdæ, a populous nation of the Indians, living toward the East and among the mountains, there was a mountain plain of about 3000 stadia in circumference; that below this plain were mines containing gold, which the Myrmeces, in size not less than foxes, dig up. They are excessively fleet, and subsist on what they catch. In winter they dig holes and pile up the earth in heaps, like moles, at the mouths of the openings. The gold dust which they obtain requires little preparation by fire. The neighboring people go after it by stealth with beasts of burden; for if it is done openly, the Myrmeces fight furiously, pursuing those that run away, and, if they seize them, kill them and the beasts. In order to prevent discovery, they place in various parts pieces of the flesh of wild beasts, and when the Myrmeces are dispersed in various directions, they take away the gold dust, and, not being acquainted with the mode of smelting it, dispose of it in its rude state at any price to merchants.491

Nearchus says he has himself seen several of the skins of these Ants, which were as large as the skins of leopards. They were brought by the Macedonian soldiers into Alexander’s camp.492

Pliny, as a matter of course, believed this marvelous story, and has inserted it in brief in his compilation of natural history. He adds, too, that in his time there were suspended in the temple of Hercules, at Erythræ, this Ant’s horns, which were looked upon as quite miraculous for their size. He also informs us it was of the color of a cat.493

Strabo and Arrian, from the manner in which they refer to the statements of Megasthenes and Nearchus, no doubt disbelieved them;494 not so, however, Pomponius Mela.495

M. de Veltheim thinks this animal, which, as Pliny says, “has the color of a cat, and is in size as large as an Egyptian wolf,” is nothing more than, and really is, the Canis corsac, the small fox of India, and that by some mistake it was represented by travelers as an ant. It is not improbable, Cuvier says, that some quadruped, in making holes in the ground, may have occasionally thrown up some grains of the precious metal. Another interpretation of this story has also been suggested. We find some remarks of Mr. Wilson, in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society, on the Mahabharata, a Sanscrit poem, that various tribes on the mountains Meru and Mandara (supposed to lie between Hindostan and Thibet) used to sell grains of gold, which they called paippilaka, or Ant-gold, which, they said, was thrown up by Ants, in Sanscrit called pippilaka. In traveling westward, this story (in itself, no doubt, untrue) may very probably have been magnified to its present dimensions.496

The laborious life and foresight of the Ant have been celebrated throughout all antiquity, and from the wise Solomon down to the amiable La Fontaine, the sluggard has been referred to this insect to “learn her ways and be wise.”497 The Arabians held the wisdom of these animals in such estimation, that they used to place one of them in the hands of a newly-born infant, repeating these words: “May the boy turn out clever and skillful.”498 But their wisdom is magnified by all, and in the panegyrics of their providence we always find the following curious notion. Plutarch, in his Land and Water Creatures Compared, thus mentions it: “But that which surpasseth all other prudence, policy, and wit, is their (the Ants’) caution and prevention which they use, that their wheat and other corn may not spurt and grow. For this is certain, that dry it cannot continue alwayes, nor sound and uncorrupt, but in time will wax soft, resolve into a milky juice, when it turneth and beginneth to swell and chit; for fear, therefore, that it become not a generative seed, and so by growing, loose the nature and property of food for their nourishment, they gnaw that end thereof or head where it is wont to spurt and bud forth.”499

The ancients, observing the Ants carry their pupæ, which in shape, size, and color very much resemble a grain of corn, and the ends of which they sometimes pull open to let out the inclosed insect, no doubt mistook the one for the other, and this action for depriving the grain of the embryo of the plant.

Some modern writers, as Addison500 and Pluche,501 it is curious to observe, have fallen into this ancient error; so ancient, in fact, it is that some have supposed the Hebrew name of the Ant to be derived from it.502 Among the poets, Prior asks:

Thus Watts, also:

And Smart:

Milton also entertained this erroneous opinion:

And also Dr. Johnson:

There is an old Eastern proverb, that “what the Ant collects in a year the monks eat up in a night,” which seems to be founded on the supposition that the Ants provide themselves with stores of food. Juvenal, also, observes, in his Sixth Satire, that “after the example of the Ant, some have learned to provide against cold and hunger.”508

“Since, therefore,” says Moufet, “(to winde up all in a few words) they (the Ants) are so exemplary for their great piety, prudence, justice, valour, temperance, modesty, charity, friendship, frugality, perseverance, industry and art; it is no wonder that Plato, in Phædone, hath determined, that they who without the help of philosophy have lead a civill life by custom or from their own diligence, they had their souls from Ants, and when they die they are turned to Ants again. To this may be added the fable of the Myrmidons, who being a people of Ægina, applied themselves to diligent labour in tilling the ground, continual digging, hard toiling, and constant

“They do better, in my opinion, who observe the Pismire, and grow rich by following his manners in labor, industry, rest, and study. We read of Midas that he was the richest King of all the West, and when he was a boy, the Pismires carryed grains of wheat into his mouth while he slept, and so foreshowed without doubt that he should be endowed with the Pismire’s prudence, and should by his labour and frugality, gain so much riches, that he should be called the Golden boy of fortune, and the Darling of prosperity. Ælianus. And when the Ants did devour and eat up the live serpent of Tiberius Cæsar, which he so dearly loved, did they not thereby give him sufficient warning that he should take heed to himself for fear of the multitude, by whom he was afterwards cruelly murthered? Suetonius.”509

Of the wars and battles of the Ants, now so familiar from the writings of Huber and others, one of the oldest records is that given by Æneas Sylvius, who afterward became Pope Pius II., of an engagement contested with obstinacy by a great and a small species, on the trunk of a pear-tree. “This action,” he states, “was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity.” Another engagement of the same description is recorded by Olaus Magnus, as having happened previous to the expulsion of Christiern the Second, of Sweden, and the smallest species, having been victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their 510

Alexander Ross, in his Appendix to the Arcana Microcosmi, p. 219, tells us: “That the cruel battels between the Venetians and Insubrians, and that also between the Liegeois and the Burgundians, in which about thirty thousand men were slain, were presignified by a great combat between two swarms of Emmets (Ants).”511

Ants were used in divination by the Greeks, and generally foretold good.512 They were also considered an attribute of Ceres.513

The following extract is from an English North-Country chap-book, entitled the Royal Dream Book: “To dream of Ants or Bees denotes that you will live in a great town or city, or in a large family, and that you will be industrious, happy, well married, and have a large family.”514 The Ant and the Bee are common figures to express these predictions.

I heard a mother once say to her child, “Never destroy Ants, for they are fairies, and will so bewitch our cows that they will give no milk.” This superstition prevails in particular about Washington and in Virginia.

Mrs. Meer Hassan Ali, in an interesting article on the Ants of India, remarks that she has often witnessed the Hindoos, male and female, depositing small portions of sugar near Ants’ nests as acts of charity to commence the day with.

With the natives of India, this lady also tells us, it is a common opinion that wherever the Red-ants colonize, prosperity attends the owner of that house.515

We read in Purchas’s Pilgrims, that “the natives of Cambaia and Malabar will go out of the path if they light on an Ant-hill, lest they might happily treade on some of them.”516

Other insects, as will be noticed in the course of this

Moufet says: “In Isthmus the priests sacrificed Pismires to the sun, either because they thought the sun the most beautiful, and therefore they would offer unto him the most beautiful creature, or the most wise, as seeing all things, and therefore they offered unto him the wisest creature.”517

In the twenty-seventh chapter of the Koran, which was revealed at Mecca, and entitled the Ant, we find, among other strange things, an odd story of the Ant, which has therefore given name to the chapter. It is as follows: “And his armies were gathered together unto Solomon, consisting of genii, and men, and birds; and they were led in distant bands, until they came to the valley of Ants.518 And an Ant, seeing the hosts approaching, said, O Ants, enter ye into your habitations, lest Solomon and his army tread you under foot, and perceive it not. And Solomon smiled, laughing at her words, and said, O Lord, excite me that I may be thankful for thy favour, wherewith thou hast favoured me, and my parents; and that I may do that which is right, and well pleasing unto thee: and introduce me, through thy mercy, into paradise, among my servants, the righteous.”519

Thevenot mentions “Solomon’s Ant” among the “Beasts that shall enter into Paradise” in the belief of the Turks, and gives the following reason: “Solomon was the greatest king that ever was, for all creatures obey’d him, and brought him presents, amongst others, an Ant brought him a Locust, which it had dragged along by main force: Solomon, perceiving that the Ant had brought a thing bigger than itself, accepted the present, and preferred it before all other creatures.”520

Plutarch, speaking of the Ant, says: “Aratus in his prognostics setteth this down for a rain toward, when they bring forth their seeds and grains (pupæ), and lay them abroad to take the air:

In the Treasvrie of Avncient and Moderne Times, it is also asserted that “when Ants walk the thickest, and more than in vsuall numbers, meeting together confusedly, it is a manifest signe of raine.”522

It is related of the celebrated Timour, that being once forced to take shelter from his enemies in a ruined building, he sat alone many hours; and, desirous of diverting his mind from his hopeless condition, at length fixed his observation upon an Ant which was carrying a grain of corn (probably a pupa) larger than itself, up a high wall. Numbering the efforts it made to accomplish this object, he found that the grain fell sixty-nine times to the ground; but the seventieth time it reached the top of the wall. “This sight,” said Timour, “gave me courage at the moment, and I have never forgotten the lesson it conveyed.”523

Plutarch, in his comparison between land and water creatures, narrates the following anecdote: “Gleanthus the Philosopher, although he maintaineth not that beasts have any use of reason, made report nevertheless that he was present at the sight of such a spectacle and occurrent as this. There were (quoth he) a number of Ants which went toward another Ant’s hole, that was not their own, carrying with them the corpse of a dead Ant; out of which hole, there came certain other Ants to meet them on the way (as it were) to parl with them, and within a while returned back and went down again; after this they came forth a second, yea a third time, and retired accordingly until in the end they brought up from beneath (as it were a ransom for the dead body) a grub or little worm; which the others received and took upon their shoulders, and after they had delivered in exchange the aforesaid corpse, departed home.”524

Of the ingenuity of the Ant in removing obstacles, the following anecdote is a very appropriate illustration: A gentleman of Cambridge one day observed an Ant dragging along what, with respect to the creature’s size, might be denominated a log of wood. Others were severally employed, 525

Franklin was much inclined to believe Ants could communicate their thoughts or desires to one another, and confirmed his opinion by several experiments. Observing that when an Ant finds some sugar, it runs immediately under ground to its hole, where, having stayed a little while, a whole army comes out, unites and marches to the place where the sugar is, and carry it off by pieces; and that if an Ant meets with a dead fly, which it cannot carry alone, it immediately hastens home, and soon after some more come out, creep to the fly, and carry it away; observing this, he put a little earthen pot, containing some treacle, into a closet, into which a number of Ants collected, and devoured the treacle very quickly. He then shook them out, and tied the pot with a thin string to a nail which he had fastened in the ceiling, so that it hung down by the string. A single Ant by chance remained in the pot, and when it had gorged itself upon the treacle, and wanted to get off, it was under great concern to find a way, and kept running about the bottom of the pot, but in vain. At last it found, after many attempts, the way to the ceiling, by going along the string. After it was come there, it ran to the wall, and thence to the ground. It had scarcely been away half an hour, when a great swarm of Ants came out, got up to the ceiling, and crept along the string into the pot, and began to eat again. This they continued till the treacle was all 526

It has been suggested, that in such instances as the preceding, the Ants may have been led by the scent or trace of treacle likely to be left by the solitary prisoner; and the following case, related by Bradley, is quoted to favor the opinion: “A nest of Ants in a nobleman’s garden discovered a closet, many yards within the house, in which conserves were kept, which they constantly attended till the nest was destroyed. Some, in their rambles, must have first discovered this depot of sweets, and informed the rest of it. It is remarkable that they always went to it by the same track, scarcely varying an inch from it, though they had to pass through two apartments; nor could the sweeping and cleaning of the rooms discomfit them, or cause them to pursue a different route.”527

Dionisio Carli, of Piacenza, a missionary in Congo, lying sick at that place, was awakened one night by his monkey leaping on his head, and almost at the same time by his Blacks crying out, much to his surprise, “Out! Out! Father!” Thoroughly awake now, Carli asked them what was the matter? “The Ants,” they cried, “are broke out, and there is no time to be lost!” Not being able to stir, he bid them carry him into the garden, which they did, four of them lifting him upon his straw bed; and yet though very quick about it, the Ants had already commenced crawling up his legs. After shaking them off their master, the Blacks took straw and fired it on the floor of four rooms, where these insects by this time were over half a foot thick. The pests being thus destroyed, Carli was conveyed back to his chamber, where he found the stench so great from the burnt bodies, that he was forced, he says, to hold his monkey close to his nose!

These Ants, Carli relates, ate up every living object within their reach; and of one cow, which was accidentally left over night in the stable through which they passed, nothing but the bones were found the next morning.528 We need not wonder at this, if we believe what Bosman has said of the Black-ants of Guinea, which were so surprisingly rapacious 529 Du Chaillu says the elephant and gorilla fly before the attack of the Bashikouay-ants, and the black men run for their lives. Many a time has he himself, he says, been awakened out of a sleep, and obliged to rush out of his hut and into the water to save his life!530 The Driver-ants531 of Western Africa, A. nomma arcens, have been known to kill the Python natalensis, the largest serpent of that part of the world.532

Col. St. Clair, after a visit by a species of small Red-ants, makes mention of the following instance, among others, of their singular destructiveness: “I next discovered that a little pet deer, which I had purchased from a negro, was extremely ill. I could not discover the cause of its malady, until, placing it on its legs, I observed that it would not let one foot touch the ground, and, on examining it, I found, to my grief, that the Red-ants had absolutely eaten a hole into the bone. The poor little animal pined all that day and died in the evening.”533

Capt. Stedman relates that the Fire-ants of Surinam caused a whole company of soldiers to start and jump about as if scalded with boiling water; and its nests were so numerous that it was not easy to avoid them.534 And Knox, in his account of Ceylon, mentions a black Ant, called by the natives Coddia or Kaddiya,535 which, he says, “bites desperately, as bad as if a man were burnt by a coal of fire; but they are of a noble nature, and will not begin unless you disturb them.” The reason the Singhalese assign for the horrible pain occasioned by their bite is curious, and is thus related by Knox: “Formerly these Ants went to ask a wife of the Noya, a venomous and noble kind of snake;536 and because 537 Capt. Stedman has a story of a large Ant that stripped the trees of their leaves, to feed, as was supposed by the natives of Surinam, a blind serpent under ground,538 which is somewhat akin to this: as is also another, related to Kirby and Spence by a friend, of a species of Mantis, taken in one of the Indian islands, which, according to the received opinion among the natives, was the parent of all their serpents.539 But, the reverse: Among the harmless snakes of Mexico is a beautiful one about a foot in length, and of the thickness of the little finger, which appears to take pleasure in the society of Ants, insomuch that it will accompany these insects upon their expeditions, and return with them to their usual nest. From this peculiarity it is called by the Spaniards and Mexicans the “Mother of the Ants.”540

When in Africa, Du Chaillu was told by the natives that criminals in former times were exposed to the path of the Bashikouay-ants, as the most cruel way of putting them to death.541 This dreadful manner of torturing was at one time also practiced by the Singhalese, and I have heard that several British soldiers have thus met their fate. The Termites have been referred to before as having been employed for a similar purpose.

To check the ravages of the Coffee-bug, Lecanium coffea, Walker, which for several years was devastating some of the plantations of Ceylon, the experiment was made of introducing the Red-ants, Formica smaragdina, Fab., which feed greedily on the Coccus.542 But the remedy threatened

The pupæ or cocoons of the Ants, during the day, are placed near the surface of the Ant-hills to obtain heat, which is indispensable to the growth of the inclosed insects. This is taken advantage of in Europe to collect the cocoons in large quantities as food for nightingales and larks. The cocoons of a species of Wood-ant, Formica rufa, are the only kind chosen. In most of the towns of Germany, one or more individuals make a living during summer by this business alone. “In 1832,” says a contributor to the Penny Encyclopedia, “we visited an old woman at Dottendorf, near Bern, who had collected for fourteen years. She went to the woods in the morning, and collected in a bag the surfaces of a number of Ant-hills where the cocoons were deposited, taking Ants and all home to her cottage, near which she had a small tiled shed covering a circular area, hollowed out in the center, with a trench full of water around it. After covering the hollow in the center with leafy boughs of walnut or hazel, she strewed the contents of her bag on the level part of the area within the trench, when the Nurse-ants immediately seized the cocoons, and carried them into a hollow under the boughs. The cocoons were thus brought into one place, and after being from time to time removed, and black ones separated by a boy who spread them out on a table, and swept off what were bad with a strong feather, they were ready for market, being sold for about 4d. or 6d. a quart. Considerable quantities of these cocoons are dried for winter food of birds, and are sold in the shops.”543

Ants not only furnish food to man for his birds, but also food for himself, in both the pupa and imago states. Nicoli Conti, who traveled in India in the early part of the fifteenth century, says the Siamese eat a species of Red-ant, of the size of a small crab, which they consider a great delicacy seasoned with pepper.544 At the present day, the pupæ of a species of Ants are a costly luxury with these people. They are not much larger than grains of sand, and are sent to table curried, or rolled in green leaves, mingled with shreds 545 And in the province of Michuacan, Mexico, is a singular species of Ant, which carries on its abdomen “a little bagful of a sweet substance, of which the children are very fond: the Mexicans suppose this to be a kind of honey collected by the insect; but Clavigero thinks it rather its eggs.”546

Piso, De Laet, Marcgrave, and other writers mention their being an article of food in different parts of South America. Piso speaks of yellow Ants called Cupia inhabiting Brazil, the abdomen of which many used for food, as well as a large species under the name of Tama-joura: “Alia præterea datur grandis species Tama-ioura dicta digiti articulum adæquans. Quarum etiam clunes dessicantur et friguntur pro bono alimento.”547 Says De Laet: “Denique formicæ hic visuntur grandissimæ, quas indigenæ vulgo comedunt; et in foris venales habent.”548 And again: “Formicis vescebantur, easquæ studiose ad victum educabant.”549 Lucas Fernandes Piedrahita, in his Historia General de las Conquistas del Nuevo Regno de Granada, states that cakes of Cazave and Ants were eaten in that country: “Al tiempo de tostarlas para este efecto, dan el mismo olor que los quesillos, que se labran para comer asados.”550 Herrera says, the natives of New Granada made their main food of Ants, which they kept and reared in their yards.551 Sloane confirms this, and says they are publicly sold in the markets.552 Abbeville de Noromba tells us these great Ants are fricasseed.553 Schomburgk, in his journey to the sources of the Essequibo, one evening saw all the boys of a village out shouting and chasing with sticks and palm leaves a large species of winged Ant, which they collected in great numbers in their calabashes for food. When roasted or boiled, he says, the natives considered these insects a great delicacy.554 Humboldt informs us that Ants are eaten by the Marivatanos and Margueritares, mixed with resin for sauce.555

Mr. Consett, in his Travels in Sweden, makes mention of a young Swede who ate live Ants with the greatest relish imaginable.556 This author states also, that in some parts of Sweden Ants are distilled along with rye, to give a flavor to the inferior kinds of brandy.557

The inhabitants of the Tonga Group have a superstitious belief that when their kings, and matabooles, or inferior chiefs, die, they are wafted to Bulotu—“the island of the blessed,” but the spirits of the lower class remain in the world, and feed on Ants and lizards.558

Ants also furnish us with an acid, called by the chemists Formic, which is said to answer the same purposes as the acetous acid. It is obtained in two modes: 1st. By distillation; the insects are introduced into a glass retort, distilled by a gentle heat, and the acid is found in the recipient. 2d. By the process called lixiviation; the Ants are washed in cold water, spread out upon a linen cloth, and boiling water poured over them, which becomes charged with the acid part.559

Formic acid is shed so sensibly by the wood Ant, Formica rufa, when an Ant-hill is stirred, that it can occasion an inflammation. If a living frog, it is asserted, be fixed upon an Ant-hill which is deranged, the animal will die in less than five minutes, even without having been bitten by the Ants.560

We read in Purchas’s Pilgrims that the large Ant of the West Indies is “so poysonfull that herewith the Indians infect their arrowes so remedilesse, that not foure of an hundred which are wounded escape.”561

The medicinal virtues of the Ant are as follows: “Ants, Formica minor of Schroder, heat and dry, and incite to venery; their acid smell mightily refreshes the vital spirits. They are said to cure the Flora, Lepra, and Lentigo. The eggs (pupæ) are effectual against deafness, and correct the hairiness of the cheeks of children being rubbed thereon.”

The Horse-ant, Formica major, Schrod., “provokes to 562

Sloane tells us the Spaniards in the West Indies have a very highly valued medicated earth called “Makimaki,” which he thinks is made of the nests of Ants.563

There is a species of Ant in Cayenne, Formica bispinosa, which collects from the bombax and silk-cotton trees a sort of lint which the natives value much as a styptic in cases of hemorrhage.564

The magicians, as mentioned by Pliny, recommended that the parings of all the finger-nails should be thrown at the entrance of Ant-holes, and the first Ant to be taken which should attempt to draw one into the hole; for if this, they asserted, be attached to the neck of a patient, he will experience a speedy cure.565

The two following remarkable cures effected by Ants of themselves are worthy of being noticed: Schuman, a missionary among the negroes of Surinam, relates in one of his letters, that after a most dangerous attack of the acclimating fever, his body was covered with boils and painful sores. He lay in his cot as helpless as a child, and had no one to administer any relief or food but a poor old negro woman, who sometimes was obliged to follow the rest to the plantations in the woods. One morning while she was absent, after spending a most restless and painful night, he observed at sunrise an immense host of Ants entering through the roof, and spread themselves over the inside of his chamber; and expecting little else than that they would make a meal of him, he commended his soul to God, and hoped thus to be released from all suffering. They presently covered his bed, and entering his sores caused him the most tormenting pain. However, they soon quitted him, and continued their march, and from that time he gradually recovered his health.566

The second is a case of stiffness in the knee effectually cured: In 1798, Mrs. Jane Crabley, aged 56 years, began to complain of a most torturing pain, and considerable enlargement of the knee-pan, which she described as, and 567

Says Plutarch, as translated by Holland: “The bear finding herself upon fulness given to loth and distaste for food, she goes to find out Ants’ nests, where she sits her down, lilling out her tongue, which is glib and soft with a kind of sweet and slimy humour, until it be full of Ants and their egges, then draweth it she in again, swalloweth them down, and thereby cureth her lothing stomack.”568

Also, in the Treasurie of Avncient and Moderne Times, we find: “The Bear, being poysoned by the Hearbe named Mandragoras, or Mandrake, doth purge his bodie by the eating of Ants or Pismires.”569

M. Huber, initiated in the mysteries of the life of these 570

Immense swarms of winged Ants are occasionally met with, and some have been recorded of such prodigious density and magnitude as to darken the air like a thick cloud, and to cover the ground or water for a considerable extent where they settled. We find in the memoirs of the Berlin Academy a description of a remarkable swarm, observed by M. Gleditch, which from afar produced an effect somewhat similar to that of an Aurora Borealis, when, from the edge of the cloud, shoot forth by jets many columns of flame and vapor, many rays like lightning, but without its brilliancy. Columns of Ants were coming and going here and there, but always rising upward, with inconceivable rapidity. They appeared to raise themselves above the clouds, to thicken there, and become more and more obscure. Other columns followed the preceding, raised themselves in like manner, shooting forth many times with equal swiftness, or mounting one after the other. Each column resembled a very slender net-work, and exhibited a tremulous, undulating, and serpentine motion. It was composed of an innumerable multitude of little winged insects, altogether black, which were continually ascending and descending in an irregular manner.571 A similar kind of Ants is spoken of by Mr. Accolutte, a clergyman of Breslau, which resembled columns of smoke, and which fell on the churches and tops of the houses, where they could be gathered by handfuls. In the German Ephemerides, Dr. Chas. Rayger gives an account of a large swarm which crossed over the town of Posen, and was directing its course toward the Danube. The whole Journal de Physique for 1790, relates the appearance of a similar phenomenon at Montpellier. The shoals moved about in different directions, having a singular intestine motion in each column, and also a general motion of rotation. About sunset all fell to the ground, and, on examining them, they were found to belong to the Formica nigra of Linnæus.572

“In September, 1814,” says Dr. Bromley, surgeon of the Clorinde, in a letter to Mr. MacLeay, “being on the deck of the hulk to the Clorinde (then in the river Medway), my attention was drawn to the water by the first lieutenant observing there was something black floating down the tide. On looking with a glass, I discovered they were insects. The boat was sent, and brought a bucketful of them on board; they proved to be a large species of Ant, and extended from the upper part of Salt-pan Reach out toward the Great Nore, a distance of five or six miles. The column appeared to be in breadth eight or ten feet, and in height about six inches, which I suppose must have been from their resting one upon another.”573 Purchas seems to have witnessed a similar phenomenon on shore. “Other sorts of Ants,” says he, “there are many, of which some become winged, and fill the air with swarms, which sometimes happens in England. On Bartholomew, 1613, I was in the island of Foulness, on our Essex shore, where were such clouds of these flying pismires, that we could nowhere flee from them, but they filled our clothes; yea, the floors of some houses where they fell were in a manner covered with a black carpet of creeping Ants, which they say drown themselves about that time of the year in the sea.”574

When Colonel Sir Augustus Frazer, of the British horse-artillery, was surveying, on the 6th of October, 1813, the scene of the battle of the Pyrenees from the summit of the mountain called Pena de Aya, or Les Quartres Couronnes, he and his friends were enveloped by a swarm of Ants, so numerous as entirely to intercept their view, so that they were 575

“Not long since,” says Josselyn in his Voyage to New England, London, 1674, “winged Ants were poured down upon the Lands out of the clouds in a storm betwixt Blackpoint and Saco, where the passenger might have walkt up to the Ancles in them.”576

Wingless Ants, in swarms or armies, also migrate at particular seasons; but for what purpose is not clear, except to obtain better forage. In Guiana, Mr. Waterton says he has met with a colony of a species of small Ant marching in order, each having in its mouth a leaf; and the army extended three miles in length, and was six feet broad.577

It is recorded by Oviedo and Herrera, that the whole island of Hispaniola was almost abandoned in consequence of the Sugar-Ant, Formica omnivora of Linnæus, which, in 1518 and the two succeeding years, overran in such countless myriads that island, devouring all vegetation, and causing a famine which nearly depopulated the Spanish colony. A tradition, says Schomburgk, prevails in Jamaica that the town of Sevilla Nueva, which was founded by Esquivel in the beginning of the sixteenth century, was entirely deserted for a similar reason. Herrera relates that, in order to get rid of this fearful scourge in Hispaniola, the priests caused great processions and vows to be made in honor of their patron saint, St. Saturnin, and that the day of this saint was celebrated with great solemnities, and the Ants in consequence began to disappear. How this saint was chosen, we read in Purchas’s Pilgrims: “This miserie (caused by the Ants) so perplexed the Spaniards, that they sought as strange a remedie as was the disease, which was to chuse some Saint for their Patron against the Antes. Alexander Giraldine, the Bishop, having sung a solemne and Pontifical Masse, after the consecration and Eleuation of the Sacrament, and devout prayers made by him and the people, opened a Booke in which was a Catalogue of the Saints, by lot to chuse some he or she Saint, whom God should please to appoint their Advocate against the Calamitie. And the Lot fell vpon Saint Saturnine, whose Feast is on the nine 578

These devouring Ants showed themselves about the year 1760 in Barbados, and caused such devastations that, in the words of Dr. Coke, “it was deliberated whether that island, formerly so flourishing, should not be deserted.” In 1763, Martinique was visited by these devastating hordes; and about the year 1770 they made their appearance in the island of Granada. Barbados, Granada, and Martinique suffered more than any other islands from this plague. Granada especially was reduced to a state of the most deplorable desolation; for, it is said, their numbers there were so immense that they covered the roads for many miles together; and so crowded were they in many places that the impressions made by the feet of horses, which traveled over them, would remain visible but for a moment or two, for they were almost instantly filled up by the surrounding swarms. Mr. Schomburgk assures us that calves, pigs, and chickens, when in a helpless state, were attacked by such large numbers of these Ants that they perished, and were soon reduced to skeletons when not timely assisted. It is asserted by Dr. Coke that the greatest precaution was requisite to prevent their attacks on men who were afflicted with sores, on women who were confined, and on children that were unable to assist themselves. Mr. Castle, from his own observation, states that even burning coals laid in their way, were extinguished by the amazing numbers which rushed upon them.

Notwithstanding the myriads that were destroyed by fire, water, poison, and other means, the devastations continued to such an alarming extent, that in 1776 the government of Martinique offered a reward of a million of their currency for a remedy against this plague; and the legislature of Granada offered £20,000 for the same object; but all attempts proved ineffectual until the hurricane in 1780 effected what human power had been unable to accomplish.

In 1814, the Ants again made their appearance in the island of Barbados, doing considerable injury; but happily they did not continue long.579

Malouet, in visiting the forests of Guiana, of which he has spoken in his travels into that part of the globe, perceived in the midst of a level savanna, as far as the eye could reach, a hillock which he would have attributed to the hand of man, if M. de Prefontaine, who accompanied him, had not informed him that, in spite of its gigantic construction, it was the work of black Ants of the largest species (most probably of the genus Ponera). He proposed to conduct him, not to the Ant-hill, where both of them would infallibly have been devoured, but to the road of the workers. M. Malouet did not approach within more than forty paces of the habitation of these insects. It had the form of a pyramid truncated at one-third of its height, and he estimated that its elevation might be about fifteen or twenty feet, on a basis of from thirty to forty. M. de Prefontaine told him that the cultivators were obliged to abandon a new establishment, when they had the misfortune to meet with one of these fortresses, unless they had sufficient strength to form a regular siege. This even occurred to M. de Prefontaine himself on his first encampment at Kourva. He was desirous of forming a second a little farther on, and perceived upon the soil a mound of earth similar to that which we have just described. He caused a circular trench to be hollowed, which he filled with a great quantity of dry wood, and, after having set fire to it in every point of its circumference, he attacked the Ant-hill with a train of artillery. Thus every issue was closed to the hostile army, which, to escape from the invasion of the flames and the shaking and plowing of the ground by the cannon-balls, was obliged to traverse, in its retreat, a trench filled with fire, where it was entirely cut off.580

The Portuguese found such prodigious numbers of Ants upon their first landing at Brazil, that they called them Rey de Brazil, King of Brazil, a name which they now there bear.581

Mr. Southey states, on the authority of Manoel Felix, that the Red-ants devoured the cloths of the altar in the Convent of S. Antonio, or S. Luiz (Maranham, Brazil), and also brought up into the church pieces of shrouds from the graves; whereupon the friars prosecuted them according to 582

Annius writes, that an ancient city situate near the Volscian Lake, and called Contenebra, was in times past overthrown by Ants, and that the place was thereupon commonly called to his day, “the camp of the Ants.”583

Ctesias makes mention “of a horse-pismire (i.e. the bigger kind of them in hollow trees) which was fed by the Magi, till hee grew to such a vast bulke as to devour two pound of flesh a daye.”584

Martial has written the following beautiful epigram on an Ant inclosed in amber: “While an Ant was wandering under the shade of the tree of Phaeton, a drop of amber enveloped the tiny insect; thus she, who in life was disregarded, became precious by death.

It has been said, remarks Mr. Southey, and regarded as a vulgar error, that Ants cannot pass over a line of chalk: the fact, however, is certain. Mr. Coleridge tried the experiment at Malta, he continues, and immediately discovered the cause: The formic acid is so powerful, that it acts upon the chalk, and the legs of the insect are burnt by the instantaneous effervescence!586

Paxamus says, that if you take some Ants and burn them, you will drive away the others, as experience has taught us. 587

Pliny says the proper remedy for the venom of the Solipuga or Solpuga Ant, and for that of all kinds of Ants, is a bat’s heart.588

Callicrates used to make Ants, and other such little creatures, out of ivory, with so much skill and ingenuity that other men could not discern the counterfeits from the originals even with the help of glasses.589

Vespidæ—Wasps, Hornets.

Concerning the generation of the Wasp, Topsel and Moufet have the following: “Isidore affirms that Wasps come out of the putrefied carkasses of asses, although he may be mistaken, for all agree that the Scarabees are procreated from them: rather am I of opinion with Pliny, 1. ii. c. 20, and the Greek authors, that they are sprung from the dead bodies of horses, for the horse is a valiant and warlike creature, hence is that verse frequently and commonly used among the Greeks:

And indeed their more than ordinary swiftnesse and their eagernesse in fight, are sufficient arguments that they can take their original from no other creature (much less from an asse, hart, or oxe) since that Nature never granted to any creatures else, to excel both in swiftness and valour. And surely that I may give another sense of that proverb of Aristotle,

this would I suppose fit to be spoken in way of jest and scorn to scolding women, which do imitate the hastiness and froward disposition of the Wasp. Other sorts of them are produced out of the putrid corps of the Crocodiles, if Horus and the Ægyptians be to be believed, for which reason when they mean a Wasp, they set it forth by an horse or crocodile. Nicander gives them the name lukosnoadon, because they sometimes come from the dead carkasses of wolves. Bellenacensis and Vicentius say, that Wasps come out of the putrefaction of an old deer’s head, flying sometimes out of the eyes, sometimes out of the nostrils.… There are those also that affirm that Wasps are begotten of the earth and rottenness of some kind of fruits, as Albertus and the Arabick scholiast.”

Of the Hornet, likewise, these writers tell the following fabulous stories: “The Latins call the Hornets Crabrones, perchance from the village Crabra in the countrey of Tusculum (where there are great store of them), or from the word Caballus, i.e. a horse, who is said to be their father. According to that of Ovid, Met. 15:

Albertus calls it a yellow Bee. Cardanus will needs have them to arise from the dead mule. Plutarch, in the life of Cleomedes, saith they come out of horse flesh, as the Bees do out of the oxe his paunch. Virgil saith they are produced of the asse.… I conceive that those are produced of the harder flesh of the horse, and the Wasps of the more tender flesh.”590

The Hornet (but whether or not it was the common species, Vespa crabro, Linn., is uncertain), we learn from Scriptures was employed by Providence to drive out the impious inhabitants of Canaan, and subdue them under the hand of the Israelites.—“And I sent the Hornet before you, which drave them out before you, even the two kings of the Amorites.”591

In the second volume of Lieutenant Holman’s Travels, 592

Dr. Fairfax, in the Philosophical Transactions, mentions a lady, who had such a horror of Wasps, that during the season in which they abound in houses, she always confined herself to her apartment.593

Dr. James tells us: “The combs (of the Hornet) are recommended in a drench for that disorder in horses, which Vigetius, L. 2, c. 23, calls scrofula, meaning, I believe, what we call the strangles.”594

Hornets’-nest is smoked under horses’ noses for distemper, cold in the head, and such like diseases. It is also given to horses in their feed for thick-windedness.

The nests of Hornets are gathered by the country people to clean spectacles.

Topsel, in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, has the following prognostications of the weather from the appearances of Hornets: “They serve instead of good almanacks to countrey people, to foretel tempests and change of weather, as hail, rain, and snow: for if they flie about in greater numbers, and be oftner seen about any place, then usually they are wont, it is a signe of heat and fair weather the next day. But if about twilight they are observed to enter often their nests, as though they would hide themselves, you must the next day expect rain, winde,

“In the year 190, before the birth of Christ,” say Moufet and Topsel, “as Julius witnesseth, an infinite multitude of Wasps flew into the market at Capua, and sate in the temple of Mars, they were with great diligence taken and burnt solemnly, yet they did foreshew the coming of the enemy and the burning of the city.”596

The first Wasp seen in the season should always be killed. By so doing, you secure to yourself good luck and freedom from enemies throughout the year.597 This is an English superstition, and it prevails in parts of America. We have one, also, directly opposed to it, namely, that the first Wasp seen in the season should not be killed if you wish to secure to yourself good luck. Many of our people, too, will kill a Wasp at no time, for, if killed, they say, it will bring upon them bad luck.

If a Wasp stings you, our superstitious think that your foes will get the advantage of you.

If the first Wasp seen in the season be seen in your house, it is a sign that you will form an unpleasant acquaintance. If the first Bee seen in the season be seen in your house, it is a sign you will form a pleasant and useful acquaintance. This arose doubtless from the apparent uselessness of the former, and worth of the latter insect.

Wasps building in a house foretell the coming to want of the family occupying it. Likewise arose from the unthriftiness of this insect.

If Hornets build high, the winter will be dry and mild; if low, cold and stormy. This is firmly believed in Virginia; and the idea seems to be, that if the nest is built high it will be more exposed to the wind than if built low.

That a person may not be stung by Wasps, Paxamus says: 598

The Creoles of Mauritius eat the larvæ of Wasps, which they roast in the combs. In taking the nests, they drive off the Wasps by means of a burning rag fastened to the end of a stick. The combs are sold at the bazaar of Port Louis.599

The following story, of the cunning of the fox in killing the Wasps to obtain their combs, is told by Ælian: “The fox (a subtile creature) is said to prey upon the Wasp in this manner: he puts his tail into the Wasps’ nest so long till it be all covered with Wasps, which he espying, pulls it out and beats them against the next stone or tree he meets withall till they be all dead, this being done again and again till all the Wasps be destroyed, he sets upon their combs and devours them.”600

The Chinese Herbal contains a singular notion, prevalent also in India, concerning the generation of the Sphex, or solitary Wasp. When the female lays her eggs in the clayey nidus she makes in houses, she incloses the dead body of a caterpillar in it for the subsistence of the worms when they are hatched. Those who observed her entombing the caterpillar did not look for the eggs, and immediately concluded that the Sphex took the worm for the progeny, and say, that as she plastered up the hole of the nest, she hummed a constant song over it, saying, “Class with me! class with me!”—and the transformation gradually took place, and was perfected in its silent grave by the next spring, when a winged Wasp emerged, to continue its posterity the coming autumn in the same mysterious way.601

Apidæ—Bees.

Concerning the piety of Bees, we find the following legends:

“A certaine simple woman having some stals of Bees which 602

Mr. Hawker’s legend is to this effect: A Cornish woman, one summer, finding her Bees refused to leave their “cloistered home” and had “ceased to play around the cottage flowers,” concealed a portion of the Holy Eucharist which she obtained at church:

The following passage, from Howell’s Parley of Beasts,

“Know, sir, that we have also a religion as well as you, and so exact a government among us here; our hummings you speak of are as so many hymns to the Great God of Nature; and there is a miraculous example in Cæsarius Cisterniensis, of some of the Holy Eucharist being let fall in a meadow by a priest, as he was returning from visiting a sick body; a swarm of Bees hard-by took It up, and in a solemn kind of procession carried It to their hive, and their erected an altar of the purest wax for it, where it was found in that form, and untouched.”604

Butler, quoting Thomas Bozius, tells us the following:

“Certaine theeves (thieves) having stolen the silver boxe wherein the wafer-Gods vse to lie, and finding one of them there being loath, belike, that he should lie abroad all night, did not cast him away, but laid him under a hive: whom the Bees acknowledging advanced to a high roome in the hive, and there insteade of his silver boxe made him another of the whitest wax: and when they had so done, in worshippe of him, and set howres they sang most sweetly beyond all measure about it: yea the owner of them took them at it at midnight with a light and al. Wherewith the bishop being made acquainted, came thither with many others: and lifting vp the hive he sawe there neere the top a most fine boxe, wherein the host was laid, and the quires of Bees singing about it, and keeping watch in the night, as monkes do in their cloisters. The bishop therefore taking the host, carried it with the greater honour into the church: whether many resorting were cured of innumerable diseases.”605

Another legend, from the School of the Eucharist, is as follows:

“A peasant swayed by a covetous mind, being communicated on Easter-Day, received the Host in his mouth, and afterwards laid it among his bees, believing that all the Bees of the neighborhood would come thither to work their wax and honey. This covetous, impious wretch was not wholly disappointed of his hopes; for all his neighbors’ Bees came indeed to his hives, but not to make honey, but to render there the honours due to the Creator. The issue of their 606

We quote also another from the School of the Eucharist:

“A certain peasant of Auvergne, a province in France, perceiving that his Bees were likely to die, to prevent this misfortune, was advised, after he had received the communion, to reserve the Host, and to blow it into one of the hives. As he tried to do it, the Host fell on the ground. Behold now a wonder! On a sudden all the Bees came forth out of their hives, and ranging themselves in good order, lifted the Host from the ground, and carrying it in upon their wings, placed it among the combes. After this the man went out about his business, and at his return found that this advice had succeeded ill, for all his Bees were dead.…”607

We will close this series of legends with one from the Lives of the Saints:

“When a thief by night had stolen St. Medard’s Bees, they, in their master’s quarrel, leaving their hive, set upon the malefactor, and eagerly pursuing him which way soever he ran, would not cease stinging of him until they had made him (whether he would or no) to go back again to their master’s house; and there, falling prostrate at his feet, submissly to cry him mercy for the crime committed. Which being done, so soon as the Saint extended unto him the hand of benediction, the Bees, like obedient servants, did forthwith stay from persecuting him, and evidently yielded 608

By the Greeks, Bees were accounted an omen of future eloquence;609 the soothsayers of the Romans, however, deemed them always of evil augury.610 They afforded also to the Romans presages of public interest, “clustering, as they do, like a bunch of grapes, upon houses or temples; presages, in fact, that are often accounted for by great events.”611 The instances of happy omens afforded by swarms of Bees are the following:

“It is said of Pindar,” we read in Pausanias’ History of Greece, “that when he was a young man, as he was going to Thespia, being wearied with the heat, as it was noon, and in the height of summer, he fell asleep at a small distance from the public road; and that Bees, as he was asleep, flew to him and wrought their honey on his lips. This circumstance first induced Pindar to compose verses.”612

A similar incident is mentioned in the life of Plato:

“Whilst Plato was yet an infant carried in the arms of his mother Perictione, Aristo his father went to Hymettus (a mountain in Attica eminent for abundance of Bees and Honey) to sacrifice to the Muses or Nymphs, taking his Wife and Child along with him; as they were busied in the Divine Rites, she laid the Child in a Thicket of Myrtles hard by; to whom, as he slept (in cunis dormienti) came a Swarm of Bees, Artists of Hymettian Honey, flying and buzzing about him, and (as it is reported) made a Honeycomb in his mouth. This was taken for a presage of the singular sweetness of his discourse; his future Eloquence foreseen in his infancy.”613

From Butler’s Lives of the Saints we have the following:

“The birth of St. Ambrose happened about the year 340 B.C., and whilst the child lay asleep in one of the courts of 614

Another instance is mentioned in the Feminine Monarchie, printed at Oxford in 1634, p. 22.

“When Ludovicus Vives was sent by Cardinal Wolsey to Oxford, there to be a public professor of Rhetoric, being placed in the College of Bees, he was welcomed thither by a swarm of Bees; which sweet creatures, to signifie the incomparable sweetnesse of his eloquence, settled themselves over his head, under the leads of his study, where they have continued to this day.… How sweetly did all things then accord, when in this neat μουσαῖον newly consecrated to the Muses, the Muses’ sweetest favorite was thus honoured by the Muses’ birds.”615

Moufet, in his Theater of Insects, and Topsel, in almost the same words in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, gives the following list of remarkable omens drawn from Bees:

“Whereas the most high God did create all other creatures for our use; so especially the Bees, not only that as mistresses they might hold forth to us a patern of politick and œconomic vertues, and inform our understanding; but that they might be able as extraordinary foretellers, to foreshew the success and event of things to come; for in the years 90, 98, 113, 208, before the birth of Christ, when as mighty huge swarms of Bees did settle in the chief market-place, and in the beast-market upon private citizens’ houses, and on the temple of Mars, there were at that time stratagems of enemies against Rome, wherewith the whole state was like to be surprised and destroyed. In the reign of Severus, the Bees made combes in his military ensigns, and especially in the camp of Niger. Divers wars upon this ensued between both the parties of Severus and Niger, and battels of doubtful event, while at length the Severian faction prevailed. The statues also of Antonius Pius placed

That which Herodotus, Pausanias, Dio Cassius, Plutarch, Julius Cæsar, Julius Capitolinus, and other historians with greater observation then reason have confirmed. Saon Acrephniensis, when he could by no means finde the oracle Trophonius; Pausanias in his œticks saith he was lead thither by a swarm of Bees. Moreover, Plutarch, Pausanias, Ælian, Alex. Alexandrinus, Theocritus and Textor are authors that Jupiter Melitæus, Hiero of Syracuse, Plato, 616

In East Norfolk, England, if Bees swarm on rotten wood, it is considered portentous of a death in the family.617 This superstition is as old at least as the time of Gay, for, among the signs that foreshadowed the death of Blonzelind, it is mentioned:

In Ireland, the mere swarming of Bees is looked upon as prognosticating a death in the family of the owner.

In parts of England it is believed, that if a swarm of Bees come to a house, and are not claimed by their owner, there will be a death in the family that hives them.619

It is a very ancient superstition that Bees, by their acute sense of smell, quickly detect an unchaste woman, and strive to make her infamy known by stinging her immediately. In a pastoral of Theocritus, the shepherd in a pleasant mood tells Venus to go away to Anchises to be well stung by Bees for her lewd behavior.

Incontinence in men, as well as unchastity in women, was thought to be punished by these little insects. Thus in the lines of Pindarus:

Pliny says: “Certain it is, that if a menstruous woman do no more but touch a Bee-hive, all the Bees will be gone and never more come to it again.”621

In Western Pennsylvania, it is believed that Bees will invariably sting red-haired persons as soon as they approach the hives.

It is a common opinion that Bees in rough and boisterous weather, and particularly in a violent storm, carry a stone in their legs, in order to preserve themselves by its weight against the power of the wind. Its antiquity is also great, for in the writings of Plutarch we find an instance of this remarkable wisdom. “The Bees of Candi,” says this philosopher, “being about to double a point or cape lying into the sea, which is much exposed to the winds, they ballase (ballast) themselves with small grit or petty stones, for to be able to endure the weather, and not be carried away against their wills with the winds through their lightness otherwise.”622

Virgil, too, about a century earlier, mentions this curious notion in the following lines:

Swammerdam, who has noticed this belief of the ancients, makes the following remarks: “But this, as Clutius justly observes, has not been hitherto remarked by any Bee-keeper, nor indeed have I myself ever seen it. Yet I should think that there may be some truth in this matter, and probably a certain observation, which I shall presently mention, has given rise to the story. There is a species of wild Bees not unlike the smallest kind of the Humble-Bee, which, as they are accustomed to build their nests near stone walls, and construct their habitations of stone and clay, sometimes carry such large stones that it is scarcely credible by what means so tender insects can sustain so great a load, and that even flying while they are obliged also to support their own body. 624

It was the general opinion of antiquity that Bees were produced from the putrid bodies of cattle. Varro says they are called Βουγόναι by the Greeks, because they arise from petrified bullocks. In another place he mentions their rising from these putrid animals, and quotes the authority of Archelaus, who says Bees proceed from bullocks, and wasps from horses.625 Virgil, however, is much more satisfactory, for he gives us the recipe in all its details for producing these insects:

This absurd notion was also promulgated by the great English chronicler, Hollingshed; for, says this author, “Hornets, waspes, Bees, and such like, whereof we have 627

To conclude the history of this belief, the following remarks of the learned Swammerdam will not be inappropriate. He says: “It is probable that the not rightly understanding Samson’s adventure of the Lion, gave rise to the popular opinion of Bees springing from dead Lions, Oxen, and Horses; and this opinion may have been considerably strengthened, and indeed in a manner confirmed, by the great number of Worms that are often found during the summer months in the carcasses of such animals, especially as these Worms somewhat resemble those produced from the eggs of Bees. However ridiculous this opinion must appear, many great men have not been ashamed to adopt and defend it. The industrious Goedaert has ventured to ascribe the origin of Bees to certain dunghill Worms, and the learned de Mei joins with him in this opinion; though neither of them had any observation to ground their belief upon, but that of the external resemblance between the Bee and a certain kind of Fly produced from these Worms.”628

The opinion that stolen Bees will not thrive, but pine away and die, is almost universal.629 It is, too, of reverend antiquity, for Pliny mentions it: “It is a common received opinion, that Rue will grow the better if it be filched out of another man’s garden; and it is as ordinarie a saying that stolen Bees will thrive worst.”630

In South Northamptonshire, England, there is a superstition that Bees will not thrive in a quarrelsome family.631 It might be well to promulgate this and the next preceding superstition. This prevails among us.

In Hampshire, England, it is a common saying that Bees are idle or unfortunate at their work whenever there are 632

In Bishopsbourne, England, there prevails the singular superstition of informing the Bees of any great public event that takes place, else they will not thrive so well.633

In Monmouthshire, England, the peasantry entertain so great a veneration for their Bees, that, says Bucke, some years since, they were accustomed to go to their hives on Christmas eve at twelve o’clock, in order to listen to their humming; which elicited, as they believed, a much more agreeable music than at any other period; since, at that time, they celebrated, in the best manner they could, the morning of Christ’s nativity.634

Sampson, in his Statistical Survey of the County of Londonderry, 1802, p. 436, says that there “Bees must not be given away, but sold; otherwise neither the giver nor the taker will have luck.”635

A clergyman in Devonshire, England, informs us that when any Devonian makes a purchase of Bees, the payment is never made in money, but in things (corn, for instance) to the value of the sum agreed upon; and the Bees are never removed but on a Good Friday.636 In western Pennsylvania, it is thought by some of the old farmers that the vender of the Bees must be away from home when the hive is taken away, else the Bees will not thrive.

Another superstition is that if a swarm of Bees be met with in an open field away from any house, it is useless to hive them, for they will never do a bit of good.

In many parts of England, a popular opinion is that when Bees remove or go away from their hives, the owner of them will die soon after.637

It is commonly believed among us that if Bees come to a house, it forebodes good luck and prosperity; and, on the contrary, if they go away, bad luck.

A North German custom and superstition is, that if the master of the house dies, a person must go to the Beehive, 638 This superstition prevails also in England, Lithuania, and in France.639

[Some years since, observes a correspondent of the Athenæum, quoted by Brande, a gentleman at a dinner table happened to mention that he was surprised, on the death of a relative, by his servant inquiring “whether his master would inform the Bees of the event, or whether he should do so.” On asking the meaning of so strange a question, the servant assured him that Bees ought always to be informed of a death in a family, or they would resent the neglect by deserting the hive. This gentleman resides in the Isle of Ely, and the anecdote was told in Suffolk; and one of the party present, a few days afterward, took the opportunity of testing the prevalence of this strange notion by inquiring of a cottager who had lately lost a relative, and happened to complain of the loss of her Bees, “whether she had told them all she ought to do?” She immediately replied, “Oh, yes; when my aunt died I told every skep (i.e. hive) myself, and put them.…

“Into mourning.” I have since ascertained the existence of the same superstition in Cornwall, Devonshire (where I have seen black crape put round the hive, or on a small black stick by its side), and Yorkshire. It probably exists in every part of the kingdom.… The mode of communicating is by whispering the fact to each hive separately.… In Oxford I was told that if a man and wife quarreled, the Bees would leave them.]640

“In some parts of Suffolk,” says Bucke, “the peasants believe, when any member of their family dies, that, unless the Bees are put in mourning by placing a piece of black cloth, cotton or silk, on the top of the hives, the Bees will either die or fly away.

“In Lithuania, when the master or mistress dies, one of the first duties performed is that of giving notice to the Bees, by rattling the keys of the house at the doors of their hives. Unless this be done, the Lithuanians imagine the 641

At Bradfield, if Bees are not invited to funerals, it is believed they will die.642

In the Living Librarie, Englished by John Molle, 1621, p. 283, we read: “Who would beleeve without superstition (if experience did not make it credible), that most commonly all the Bees die in their hives, if the master or mistress of the house chance to die, except the hives be presently removed into some other place? And yet I know this hath hapned to folke no way stained with superstition.”643

A similar superstition is, that Beehives belonging to deceased persons should be turned over the moment when the corpse is taken out of the house.644 No consequence is given for the non-performance of this rite.

The following item is clipped from the Argus, a London newspaper, printed Sept. 13, 1790: “A superstitious custom prevails at every funeral in Devonshire, of turning round the Bee-hives that belonged to the deceased, if he had any, and that at the moment the corpse is carrying out of the house. At a funeral some time since, at Columpton, of a rich old farmer, a laughable circumstance of this sort occurred: for, just as the corpse was placed in the hearse, and the horsemen, to a large number, were drawn in order for the procession of the funeral, a person called out, ‘Turn the Bees,’ when a servant who had no knowledge of such a custom, instead of turning the hives about, lifted them up, and then laid them down on their sides. The Bees, thus hastily invaded, instantly attacked and fastened on the horses and their riders. It was in vain they galloped off, the Bees as precipitately followed, and left their stings as marks of indignation. A general confusion took place, attended with loss of hats, wigs, etc., and the corpse during the conflict was left unattended; nor was it till after a considerable time that the funeral attendants could be rallied, in order to proceed to the interment of their deceased friend.”645

After the death of a member of a family, it has frequently 646

The following is an extract from a Tour through Brittany, published in the Cambrian Quarterly Magazine, vol. ii. p. 215: “If there are Bees kept at the house where a marriage feast is celebrated, care is always taken to dress up their hives in red, which is done by placing upon them pieces of scarlet cloth, or one of some such bright color; the Bretons imagining that the Bees would forsake their dwellings if they were not made to participate in the rejoicings of their owners: in like manner they are all put into mourning when a death occurs in a family.”647

In the Magazine of Natural History we find the following instance of singing psalms to Bees to make them thrive: “When in Bedfordshire lately, we were informed of an old man who sang a psalm last year in front of some hives which were not doing well, but which, he said, would thrive in consequence of that ceremony. Our informant could not state whether this was a local or individual superstition.”648

It is commonly said that if you sing to your Bees before they swarm, it will prevent their leaving your premises when they do swarm.

Peter Rotharmel, a western Pennsylvanian, had a singular notion that no man could have at one time a hundred hives of Bees. He declared he had often as many as ninety-nine, but could never add another to them.649 I have since

The Apiarians of Bedfordshire, England, have a custom of, as they call it, ringing their swarms with the door-key and the frying-pan; and if a swarm settles on another’s premises, it is irrecoverable by the owner, unless he can prove the ringing, but it becomes the property of that person upon whose premises it settles.650

The practice of beating pans, and making a great noise to induce a swarm of Bees to settle, is, at least, as old as the time of Virgil. He thus mentions it:

But concerning this practice, Langstroth says: “It is probably not a whit more efficacious than the hideous noises of some savage tribes, who, imagining that the sun, in an eclipse, has been swallowed by an enormous dragon, resort to such means to compel his snakeship to disgorge their favorite luminary.”652

Dr. Toner, the author of that very interesting little work, “Maternal Instinct or Love,” informs me that when a boy he witnessed a mode of alluring a swarm of Bees to settle, performed by a German man and his wife, which struck him at the time as being remarkable, and which was as follows: Having first put some pig-manure upon the hive into which

Another strange mode of alluring Bees into a new hive is practiced near Gloucester, England, but only when all the usual ways of preparing hives fail; it is this: When a swarm is to be hived, instead of moistening the inside of the hive with honey, or sugar and water, the Bee-master throws into it, inverted, about a pint of beans, which he causes a sow to devour, and immediately then, it is said, will the Bees take to it.653

Pliny, as follows, incidentally mentions another curious mode of preparing the hives to best suit the Bees: “Touching Baulme, which the Greeks call Melittis or Melissophyllon: if Bee-hives be rubbed all over and besmeared with the juice thereof, the Bees will never go away; for there is not a flower whereof they be more desirous and faine than of it.”654

Borlase, in his Antiquities of Cornwall, p. 168, tells us of another strange practice in the hiving of Bees. He says: “The Cornish, to this day, invoke the spirit of Browny, when their Bees swarm; and they think that their crying Browny, Browny, will prevent them from returning into the former hive, and make them pitch and form a new colony.”655

The Rev. Thomas P. Hunt, of Wyoming, Pa., has devised an amusing plan, by which he says he can, at all times, prevent a swarm of Bees from leaving his premises. Before his stocks swarm, he collects a number of dead Bees, and, stringing them with a needle and thread, as worms are strung for catching eels, makes of them a ball about the size of an egg, leaving a few strands loose. By carrying—fastened to a pole—this “Bee-bob” about his Apiary, when the Bees are swarming, or by placing it in some central position, he invariably secures every swarm.656

The barbarous practice of killing Bees for their honey, not yet entirely abolished, did not exist in the time of Aristotle, Varro, Columella, and Pliny. The old cultivators

Here Rests, CUT OFF FROM USEFUL LABOR, A COLONY OF INDUSTRIOUS BEES, BASELY MURDERED BY ITS UNGRATEFUL AND IGNORANT OWNER.

To the epitaph also may be appended Thomson’s verses:

It is considered very cruel in Africa, as Campbell observes, to kill Bees in order to obtain their honey, especially as from flowers being there at all seasons, and most in winter, they can live comfortably all the year round. A Hottentot, who was accustomed to kill the Bees, was often reasoned with by the humane to give up so cruel a practice, yet he persisted in it till a circumstance occurred which determined him to relinquish it. He had a water-mill for grinding his corn, which went very slowly, from the smallness of the stream which turned it; consequently the flour dropped very gently. For some time much less than usual came into the sack, the cause of which he could not discover. At length he found that a great part of his flour, as it was ground, was carried off by the Bees to their hives: on examining this, he 658

An old English proverb, relative to the swarming of Bees, is,—

In Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, under the month of May, are these lines:

On which is the following observation in Tusser Redivivus, 1744, p. 62: “The tinkling after them with a warming-pan, frying-pan, kettle, is of good use to let the neighbors know you have a swarm in the air, which you claim wherever it lights; but I believe of very little purpose to the reclaiming of the Bees, who are thought to delight in no noise but their own.”

Ill fortune attends the killing of Bees,—a common saying. This, doubtless, arose from the thrift and usefulness of these insects.

That swarms of Bees, or fields, houses, stalls of cattle, or workshops, may not be affected by enchantment, Leontinus says: “Dig in the hoof of the right side of a sable ass under the threshold of the door, and pour on some liquid pitchy resin, salt, Heracleotic origanum, cardamonium, cumin, some fine bread, squills, a chaplet of white or of crimson wool, the chaste tree, vervain, sulphur, pitchy torches; and lay on some amaranthus every month, and lay on the mould; and, having scattered seeds of different kinds, let them remain.”660

To cure the stings of Bees, we have the following remedies: “Rue,” says Pliny, “is an hearbe as medicinable as the best … and is available against the stings of Bees, Hornets, and Wasps, and against the poison of the Cantharides and Salamanders.661

“Yea, and it is an excellent thing for them that be stung, to take the very Bees in drinke; for it is an approved cure.662

“Baulme is a most present remedy not only against their stings, but also of Wespes, Spiders, and Scorpions.663

“The Laurell, both leafe, barke, and berrie, is by nature hot; and applied as a liniment, be singular good for the pricke or sting of Wasps, Hornets, and Bees.664

“For the sting of Bees, Wasps, and Hornets, the Howlat (owlet) is counted a soveraigne thing, by a certaine antipathie in nature.665

“Moreover, as many as have about them the bill of a Woodspeck (Woodpecker) when they come to take honey out of the hive, shall not be stung by Bees.”666

It is said that if a man suffers himself to be stung by Bees, he will find that the poison will produce less and less effect upon his system, till, finally, like Mithridates of old, he will appear to almost thrive upon poison itself. When Langstroth first became interested in Bees, according to his statement, a sting was quite a formidable thing, the pain being often intense, and the wound swelling so as sometimes to obstruct his sight. But, at length, however, the pain was usually slight, and, if the sting was quickly extracted, no unpleasant consequences ensued, even if no remedies were used. Huish speaks of seeing the bald head of Bonner, a celebrated practical Apiarian, covered with stings, which seemed to produce upon him no unpleasant effects. The Rev. Mr. Kleine advises beginners to suffer themselves to be stung frequently, assuring them that, in two seasons, their systems will become accustomed to the poison. An old English Apiarian advises a person who has been stung, to 667

It is generally believed among our boys that if the part stung by a Bee be rubbed with the leaves of three different plants at the same time, the pain will be relieved.

Willsford, in his Nature’s Secrets, p. 134, says: “Bees, in fair weather, not wandering far from their hives, presage the approach of some stormy weather.… Wasps, Hornets, and Gnats, biting more eagerly than they used to do, is a sign of rainy weather.”668

The prognostication drawn from a flight of Bees, in which there is doubtless much truth, appears from the following lines to have been known to Virgil:

Bees were employed as the symbol of Epeses; they are common also on coins of Elyrus, Julis, and Præsus.670

One of the most remarkable facts in the history of Bees is that passage in the Bible671 about the swarm of these insects and honey in the carcass of the lion slain by Samson. Some look upon it as a paradox, others as altogether incredible; but it admits of easy explanation. The lion had been dead some little time before the Bees had taken up their abode in the carcass, for it is expressly stated that “after a time,” Samson returned and saw the Bees and honey in the carcass, so that “if,” as Oedman has well observed, “any one here represents to himself a corrupt and putrid carcass, the occurrence ceases to have any true similitude, for it is well known in these countries, at certain seasons of the year, the heat will in twenty-four hours so completely dry up the moisture of dead animals, and that without their undergoing decomposition, that their bodies long remain, like mummies, unaltered, and entirely free from offensive odor.” To the foregoing quotation we may add that very probably the larvæ of flies, ants, and other insects, 672