Note 142 — BOOK XI. THE VARIOUS KINDS OF INSECTS.

M. de Veltheim thinks that by this is really meant the Canis corsac, the small fox of India, but that by some mistake it was represented by travellers 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. The story is derived from the narratives of Clearchus and Megasthenes. Another interpretation of this story has also been suggested. We find from 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 Tibet) 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 travelling westward, this story, in itself, no doubt, untrue, may very probably have been magnified to its present dimensions.