Note 1 — CHAP. X. ESTABLISHMENT OF A MIXED ANT-HILL IN A GLASS APPARATUS.
James Rawlins Johnson translation
The ceiling or roof of the chambers in which these insects are lodged, appears to constitute their favourite residence. This I found to be the case with some female ants I kept in confinement. It is highly probable this position against gravity is maintained by means of an apparatus similar to what Sir Everard Home has observed in regard to the house-fly, of which he has given a full description, in the Philosophical Transactions, for 1816. It is, no doubt, upon this principle, that ants are enabled to walk perpendicularly up walls, bearing in their pincers insects (of which we have many instances) considerably larger and heavier than themselves.—T.