Chapter VI · FIFTH DAY. (continued 2)

During the action some are found leading away prisoners; others going as couriers to bring fresh troops to the fight, and some in the immediate vicinity of the hills keeping guard, and transacting the common business of the community.

The battle occupied a space of about three feet square, and lasted until the approach of night: then each party retired; but was on the spot next morning at dawn of day, and re-commenced the battle with greater fury, and carnage. It finally terminated without subverting either republic.

It was very remarkable, says Huber, that these ants, in promiscuous combat, should know their own party. In a few cases, for a moment, friends assailed, but rectified the error, instantly, by caressing.

The legionary ant. Though the natural history of this insect, throughout, is very interesting, there is place for but one principal fact: i.e. their practice of making the formica fusca, or negro ant, a slave. This curious fact was first discovered by Huber, and has since been confirmed by Latreille, and is now admitted readily by naturalists.

A campaign, for the purpose of procuring slaves, was observed closely by Huber on the 17th of June, 1804. The column was first seen crossing the road, being about ten inches long and four broad. He followed them until they approached the nest of the negro ant. The centinels on duty gave the alarm, and the ants rushed out, and made a spirited resistance to the invaders, but were finally driven into their house. The legionary ants then rushed forward, attacked the hill, and took the little city by assault. They remained in it but a few minutes, and returned, each one carrying in his mouth a larva, or young negro ant, and scampered home in confusion.

They never take the old ants captive, but the young, in a state of infancy, and thus raise them in a state of slavery. The consequence is that they are submissive and affectionate, and perform with cheerfulness and fidelity all the domestic duties of a legionary city. They provide house and food for their masters, attend them, and serve them in every possible way.

The sanguine ant is also a slave dealer, and in the same manner as the legionary. Nor is the negro ant the only victim: the mining ant is also reduced to a state of slavery by the legionary, and sanguine ants.

There remains to be stated another circumstance connected with the natural history of ants, which would scarcely be credited, were it not tested by such names as Linnæus, Huber, and Latreille: that is, they keep milch-cows. There are certain insects, from which they extract a sweet saccharine fluid for food, as we do milk from cows. The principal insects which are thus used, are the plant-louse, and the gall-insect. Linnæus, and after him other naturalists, call these insects the milch-cows of the ants.

The fluid issues from the body of the insect through little tubes placed above the abdomen on either side. When no ants are present the plant-lice emit this liquor from their bodies by a jerking motion: when they are in attendance they suck the juice with great avidity. But what is still more astonishing, the ants compel their milch-cattle to yield their milk, by gently patting them on each side with their antennæ, or feelers. This is properly milking them.

In addition to this the ants take care to appropriate these milch-cattle to themselves, by collecting them in herds, guarding and feeding them. They sometimes make an enclosure around them, or around the tree or plant on which they find them, and thus secure them. Some herds are owned in common by the ant-hill; and others appear to belong to individuals.

The yellow ant is known to remove these plant-lice from the plants, and domesticate them in their hillocks for service in winter.

In conclusion, in regard to ants we may mention their ravages committed on property. In the East and West Indies they are very destructive. They undermine houses in such a manner as to cause them to fall. Some species will devour the wood of a building of small size, in a single night. And it is remarkable that they make their ravages internally. One would not observe that they had assailed a beam of timber, unless he should take means to examine its interior. They will devour even the exterior of the timber when they have first coated it over with mud or clay in order to conceal their work. They devour furniture of all kinds, and completely consume the trees which fall in some countries. The extent of the damage which they can do, is incalculable.

These remarks will show what interest the natural history of insects can inspire. It is not permitted to extend the subject further in a note.]

The distinction between clean and unclean Fowls, made in the Scriptures, serves to point out the difference between the two classes of saints and sinners among the human race. Those Fowls were accounted clean, which are gentle in their nature, as the Dove, and musical in their notes, as the Lark; which qualifications are not to be found among birds of prey, as the Ostrich, Eagle, Vulture, Hawk, Cormorant, Raven, Owl, Bat, &c. All these, so far as their instincts and properties are discovered to us, agree so well with the different characters of men, to whom in Scripture they have a symbolical allusion, that none but the infinitely wise Creator could have distinguished and applied their several peculiarities with so much simplicity, brevity, and propriety.

Several of the unclean Fowls feed on filth and dead carcases; whose “young ones” also “suck up blood, and where the slain are, there are they.” Dr. Buchanan, when at the distance of fifty miles from Juggernaut, says, “We know that we are approaching Juggernaut, by the human bones which we have seen for several days strewed by the way. The Vultures seem to live here on human prey: they exhibit a shocking tameness. The obscene animals will not leave the body sometimes till we come close to them. Yesterday a woman devoted herself to the idol: this morning, as I passed the place of skulls, nothing remained of her but her bones.” The unrenewed nature of man is no more offended with evil, than a vulture is with human flesh, or a crow is with carrion, on which it feeds with delight.

The unclean Fowls persecute and devour those of a more gentle nature. The Eagle, נשר nesher, is from nasher to lacerate, cut, or tear to pieces; hence the Eagle, a most rapacious bird of prey, has its name from tearing the flesh of animals it feeds on: and for this purpose, birds of prey have, in general, strong crooked talons and a hooked beak. The Eagle is a cruel bird, exceedingly ravenous, and almost insatiable. This propensity in birds of prey to seize, tear, and devour, is expressive of the violent and malevolent dispositions of some persons, who hate and endeavor to injure those who live in the fear of God, and keep his commandments. Such were the heathens, whom St. Paul has described as “cruel” and “unmerciful, full of envy, murder, and debate,” given up to the vilest passions, and all the uncleanness of “dead works.”

The want of natural affection, and a right understanding of Divine things, among ungodly persons, is strikingly exhibited in the character of the Ostrich. This foolish bird, though it has wings, is not able to raise itself from the earth, and is void of that instinctive tenderness, which other creatures feel for their offspring: “which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust, and forgetteth that the foot may crash them, or that the wild beast, may break them. She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers; her labor is in vain without fear; because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding.” The Ostrich lays from thirty to fifty eggs, not placed, like those of some other birds, upon trees, or in the clefts of rocks, but in the sand, forgetting the danger to which they are exposed from the feet of travellers or wild beasts. On the most trivial occasion, she forsakes her eggs, or her young ones, to which, perhaps, she never returns; or, if she does, it may be too late, either to restore life to the one, or preserve the lives of the other. The prophet, applying this want of affection, says, “The daughter of my people is cruel, like the Ostriches in the wilderness.” She is likewise inconsiderate and foolish in her private capacity, says Dr. Shaw, particularly in her choice of food, which is frequently highly detrimental and pernicious to her; for she swallows every thing greedily and indiscriminately, whether it be pieces of rags, leather, wood, stone, or even iron. To secure herself, she will thrust her head into the shrubs, though her body, which, when standing upright, is from six to eight feet in height, from the top of the head to the ground, be exposed. She has a little head, and scarcely any brain: hence historians tell us, that the emperor Heliogabalus, to gratify his luxurious taste, together with other delicacies, such as the combs of Cocks, the tongues of Pheasants and Nightingales, the eggs of Partridges, the heads of Parrots and Peacocks, the brains of Thrushes, had likewise served up to him, at one entertainment, the heads of six hundred Ostriches for the sake of the brains; because, being so very small, a less number would not have been sufficient to make a dish. What an affecting emblematical representation is this singular bird of the moral qualifications and habits of ignorant and wicked men! not to mention the superstitious practice of offering children to Moloch and other diabolical deities; the custom of exposing new-born infants in the woods to perish with hunger, or be devoured by wild beasts; a practice still tolerated among the idolaters of China.

The heathen, who “did not like to retain God in their knowledge, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened,” were in this respect, symbolically represented by the tribe of Owls and Bats, and other birds of night, all of which the law pronounced to be unclean. In the Owl we have a striking image of the sceptic, who loves darkness rather than light, and is more proud of his artificial ignorance than any man ought to be of the most useful knowledge: who could never find Divine truth, because he never loved it; as the Owl is offended with that glory which the sun diffuses over the natural creation. As the day has no charms for the Owl, so revealed religion has nothing wise or wonderful in its nature and design with the unbelieving philosopher; who brings with him to the word of God all that prejudice with which the Owl flies out of its retreat into the sun-shine. Yet he has his admirers; as the hooting of the Owl is music in the ears of another of the same species. This emblematical bird, when exposed to the light of the sun against his will, lets down a conspicuous membrane over his eyes, to guard them from the inconvenient splendor of the orb of day; as the infidel draws a dark veil of evil reasonings and blasphemous objections over his heart, to intercept and weaken the effulgent rays of heavenly truth. The Owl has a natural aversion from the light; and if he breaks through his ordinary rule, and settled habit, so as to appear in the day-time, he is pursued and reprimanded by other birds, as one that is a disgrace to their kind. But the birds which thus express their indignation against the Owl, never kill him, being unarmed and inoffensive in their nature.156 So an infidel should not be put to death for his detestable and demoralizing principles; but all Christians should agree in giving public notice of him, and showing the world what he is. For internal realities do not always comport with external appearances. The outward appearance of the Owl seems to promise a great degree of gravity and wisdom, while its principles and manners are opposite to the common sense of other birds, and its office in the creation reduces it to the rank of a common mouse-trap. So the philosophers it represented made a pompous display of reason and learning, all of which, so far as they applied these to divinity, were no better than ignorance and folly. “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools;” and by an unaccountable fatality chose this very bird as the emblem of their wisdom; which was accordingly held in great veneration at Athens, the principal seat of heathen learning, as the symbol of Minerva, the tutelar goddess of that city.

The Bat is a sort of monster, partaking of the nature of both a bird and a beast, having feet or claws growing out of its pinions, and contradicts the general order of nature by creeping with the instruments of its flight. What a contrast between this creature and the Lark!

Nothing can be more pleasing, observes Goldsmith, than to see the Lark warbling upon the wing; raising its note as it soars, till it seems lost in the immense heights above us; the note continuing, the bird itself unseen; to see it then descending with a swell as it comes from the clouds, yet sinking by degrees as it approaches its nest, the spot where all its affections are centered—the spot which has prompted all this joy. While the Lark thus mounts on triumphant wings, soaring up into the heavens with a song of praise to its Creator, this little black animal lies sleeping in holes and cracks of decayed edifices; and if disturbed by any accident, drops down and crawls upon the earth. When darkness prevails, it comes forth from its concealment to haunt the cemeteries of the dead, and desolate places; as if it purposely avoided the society of all cheerful birds, and took a delight in associating with Owls and Beetles in dark and solitary abodes. “The bat is called עטלף âtalaph,” according to Parkhurst, “from עט ât to fly, and עלף âlaph, darkness or obscurity, because it flies about in the dusk of the evening, and in the night; so the Septuagint νυκτερις, from νυξ, the night, and the Vulgate, vespertilio, from vesper, the evening.”

These birds of the night but too appropriately symbolize with persons who love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. Dr. Shaw, speaking of Ostriches, says, “In the lonesome part of the night they frequently make a very doleful and hideous noise, sometimes resembling the roar of the Lion; at other times the hoarser voices of other quadrupeds, particularly the Bull or Ox.” He adds, “I have often heard them groan as if in the greatest agonies.” Thus——