Note 1 — CHAP. III. OF THE FECUNDATION, &C. OF ANTS.

Assemblages of winged ants have been also witnessed in this country, as is evidenced by the following quotation:—“In the beginning of August, 1812, I was going up the Orford river, in Suffolk, in a row-boat, in the evening, when my attention was caught by an infinite number of winged ants, both males and females, at which the fish were every where darting, floating alive upon the surface of the water. While passing the river, these had probably been precipitated into it, either by the wind, or by a heavy shower, which had just fallen. Captain Haverfield, R. N., gave me an account of an extraordinary appearance of ants observed by him in the Medway, in the autumn of 1814, when he was first-lieutenant of the Clorinde, which is confirmed by the following letter, addressed by the surgeon of that ship, now Dr. Bromley, to Mr. Mac Leay:—‘In Sept. 1814, being on the deck of the hulk of the Clorinde, my attention was drawn to the water by the first-lieutenant (Haverfield) observing there was something black floating down with the tide. On looking with a glass, I discovered they were insects. The boat was sent, and brought a bucket full of them on board; they proved to be a large species of ant, and extended from the upper part of Salt-pan reach, out towards 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.’ These ants were winged. Whence this immense column came was not ascertained. From the number here agglomerated, one would think that all the ant-hills of Kent and Surrey could scarcely have furnished a sufficient number of males and females to form it. When Colonel Sir Augustus Frazer, of the Horse Artillery, was surveying, on the 6th of October, 1813, the scene of the battle of the Pyrennees from the summit of the mountain called Pena de Aya, or Les quatre Couronnes, he and his friends were enveloped by a swarm of ants, so numerous as entirely to intercept their view, so that they were glad to remove to another station, in order to get rid of them.”—Introduction to Entomology, by Kirby and Spence, Vol. II. p. 53.—T.