the road, and then steered their course into a field of ripe wheat, whither, I regret to say, I was unable to follow them."'^

Huber adds that, having returned to the pillaged nest to examine it more closely, he saw some ashy-black workers brmging back to their home the few larvae which they had succeeded in saving. Having later discovered the nest of these Amazons, which is the name he gives to the warrior ants, he found there many of the ashy-black ants living on very good terms with their kidnappers.

The Amazons begin their expeditions at the end of June, during the hottest hours of the day. They come out in long files, eight or ten abreast, preceded by their scouts. These columns start at a run, in a straight line, and without feeling their way. They have no

Fi^. 370. — Mining Ant {Formica cunicniaria), male, worker, and female.

chieftain. The van is re-formed every moment. Those who are in front do not remain there; at the end of a certain time they go and range themselves in the rear, and are replaced by those which were behind. The whole troop is thus in constant communication through its entire length. Rarely does the expedition divide into two bodies. Arrived under the walls of the fortress, the column halts and masses itself into one corps. The assault is made with incredible impetuosity. In the twinkling of an eye the place is escaladed, taken by storm, and pillaged, and the ashy-black ants are either put to flight or led away into captivity. The same ant-hill may be invaded as many as three times running on the same day; but then the ashy-black ants, on their guard, have barricaded themselves in, and in that case the aggressors return home without pillaging them. The Mining Ants (Fig. 370) are less timid than the ashy-black; and, as they defend themselves with more energy, there are frequently deadly combats, and the field of battle is left covered with heads, legs, and limbs, scattered about here and there with the dead and

" Recherches sur les Mosurs des Fourmis indigenes," p. 210. Paris, 181O.

bounded. The miners pursue the pillagers, and snatch their plunder rom them. But they are sometimes driven back vigorously, and ;he russet ants gain their lair with the plunder.

The tactics of the Red Ants (Fonnica sangiihied) differ from those jf the russet. They only sally forth in small detachments, which Degin by engaging in skirmishes with the scouts thrown out round :he enemy's ant-hill. Couriers, despatched from time to time to the :amp of the red ants, bring up reinforcements. When the troop

"eels itself sufficiently strong, it invades the nest of the ashy-black mts, and carries off their offspring, which the latter have not had ime to secure. Sometimes, also, the red ants instal themselves in

Fig. 371. — Philanthus triangulum. Fig. 372. -Mutilla Europaea, male and female.

i the nest whose inhabitants they have ejected, and transfer their own population to it. The motive for this emigration is that the old nest has become useless, or that it is exposed to some danger. The red ants are not the only ants which thus desert their birthplace. Many species abandon it likewise, for analogous motives, and construct elsewhere another dwelling, to which they transport all the population of the first nest. When we reflect on the habits of ants, we are forced to admit that intelligence and reason appear still more in their acts than in those of bees. The life of ants, as well as that of bees, as far as we are concerned, is an unintelligible enigma. The acts of animals, in general, are sometimes an abyss unfathomable to our reason. The Orientals say, '' The last word may be written on man: on the elephant, never! " Let us add that they should no more say that the elephant will be an inexhaustible theme, but that the history of the ant will continue so always.

The best-known genera of the Fossores, or Fossorial Hymenoptera, are Philanthus (Fig. 371), which feeds its larvae on bees, having first numbed them by its sting; Pompilus and Sphex, which attack

70*

spiders; and Mutilla (Fig. 372), whose females resemble ants, being variegated with red and yellow, the males, being provided with wings and smaller in size, and black. The MutiUce. are parasitical on solitary bees, their larvae devouring their larvae.

Other Hymenoptera lay their eggs under the skin of certain

Fig. 373.— Species of Pimpla. Fig. 374.— Species of Ophion.

insects, especially when these are in the larva or caterpillar state, thus rendering service to agriculture by destroying a great number of noxious insects. In lieu of a sting they have an auger, intended to pierce the skin of their victims. It is thus that the Ichneumons introduce their eggs under the skin of caterpillars. The Finipla (Fig. 373), which belongs to this group, has a very long ovipositor, which, with its two appendages, constitutes three lancets, and enables it to get at the larvae in their retreats. The Ophions (Fig. 374)

tiVMENOPTERA. 39S

have a sickle-shaped abdomen. They lay their eggs on the skin of caterpillars, which they attack with the short cutting auger with which they are provided. The Cynips, or Gall-insects, are small black or tawny Hymenoptera, the females of which have an auger, rolled up spirally and hidden in a fissure of the abdomen, with which they prick the young shoots of plants. A peculiar liquid which they pour into the hole round the egg they have laid, causes an excrescence to grow, which is called a " gall." The larva is developed in the centre of this gall,

— Oak Fig. 375. — Gall insect Fig. 376. Galls, produced by Fig. of377.a Gall.— Interior {Cynips qnerciisfolit). Cyiiips qnercusfolii.

and transformed into a pupa, and afterwards into a perfect insect, which makes its exit by a hole in the wall of its prison. Fig. 375 represents the Cynips of the oak tree {Cynips qnercusfolii)^ and Figs. 376 and 377 the galls it produces. The galls of the rose are hairy, and are sometimes called " Robin's Cushion." The gall-nut, rich in tannin, which is used in the manufacture of ink, is the produce of a foreign Cynips, which lives on an oak found in the East. Apples of Sodom, which travellers bring back from the shores of the Dead Sea, are large galls'^ full of dry dust and larv?e.

The Urocerata and the Tenthredinetce form two tribes of insects,

Made by Cynips insana. — Ed.

of which the first are of great size, have a cylindrical body, the abdomen being attached to the thorax in its whole breadth, without any pedicle. The insects of the genus Sirex (Fig. 378), belonging to the former of these, lay their eggs in living wood, and their larvae live for many years in the interior. They are to be met with in great numbers in forests of pine trees, and, according to Latreille, show themselves sometimes in such great numbers as to become an object of terror. The female of the Giant Sirex {Sirex gigas) possesses a long recti-

Fig. 378.— Sirex gigas.

linear auger. The mandibles of the larvae are of great strength, and are even capable of perforating lead. This fact has been observed many times. In 1857 Marshal Vaillant presented to the Academie des Sciences some packets of cartridges containing balls which had been pierced through by the larvae of the Sirex during the sojourn of the French troops in the Crimea. Some of these insects were still shut up in the gallery which they had hollowed out in the metal. M. Dumeril (and this was one of the last works of that venerable and learned naturalist) wrote a Report on this subject, in which were recorded many analogous instances. He quoted, as an examj^le,

that M. le Marc^uis de Breme, in 1844, showed to the Socie'te Zoolugique many cartridges in which the balls had been perforated

by the insects to a depth of about a quarter of an inch. These cartridges came from the arsenal of Turin. They had been placed in barrels made of larch wood, the inside of which had been attacked by the insects. It was discovered that it was after having left the wood that they had gnawed through the envelopes of the cartridges, and at last into the balls themselves. In 1833 Audouin presented to the Societe Entomologique de France a plate of lead, from the roof of a building, on which this naturalist supposed that the larvte of a Ca/Hdinnr' had made deep sinuosities, as they do in wood. Before this, parts of the leaden roofs at I.a Rochelle had been noticed not only gnawed, but pierced from one side to the other, by the larvae of Bostrichus capucintcs.\ In 1844 M. Desmarest reported the erosion and perforation of sheets of lead by a species of BostricJws and by Callidimn. In 1843 ^- ^^ Boys presented to the Societe d'Agriculture of Limoges some stereotyped plates — composed, as is well-known, of a very hard alloy, formed of antimony and lead — which had been pierced and riddled with holes by two specimens of a Bostrichus. The holes were a seventh of an inch in diameter by two inches in depth. The stereotypes were thus perforated, although they had been wrapped up in many folds of paper and cardboard. As the printing served for a work called " Les Fastes Militaires de la France," one may say that the brave soldiers received from an insect more wounds than their enemies had ever given them.

To prove that these insects have really the power to perforate metals as others perforate and pass through woody matter, the entomologist of Limoges made the following experiments. He placed in a leaden box, the sides of which were thin, a living specimen of the Fire-coloured Lepture of Geoffroy {Callidium sanguineiim)^ a Coleopteron which is commonly found in houses in France in winter, its larvae being developed in great numbers in firewood. Above this box he fitted on another, also containing a specimen of this insect, which he shut in with a third box. A few days afterwards he separated the boxes. The middle one had been pierced through, and the two insects were found together, the one which was below having made a hole through which it might introduce itself into the middle box. M. Du Boys made a chemical experiment which enabled him to estabhsh beyond a doubt that the insect which had gnawed the metal had not made it serve as its food. The dried body of one of these insects was analysed. After having immersed -it in nitric acid it was completely burnt, and there could not be

A coleopterous insect. — Ed. t Also a beetle. —Ed.

found in the ashes acted upon by the nitric acid the least trace of lead. This experiment proves that these insects had for their object only to escape from the galleries in which they were accidentally deposited in their larva state, and that it was not until they had undergone their complete transformation that they endeavoured to gain their liberty. Observations of the same kind were multiplied after the Report of M. Dumeril. The Academie des Sciences received, in the month of June, 1861, two Memoirs — one from M. Heriot, captain of artillery, the other from M. Bouteille, curator of the Museum of Natural History of Grenoble — containing many new observations on the perforation by insects of leaden balls contained in cartridges prepared for war. M. Milne-Edwards read to the Academie des Sciences a short Report on these works.

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