A curious kind of gall, produced on the rose-trees by the Cynips rosae, which is known by the name of Bedeguar, has been placed among the remedies which may be successfully employed against diarrhoea and dysentery, and useful in cases of scurvy, stone, and worms.
The galls of commerce, commonly called Nut-galls, are found on the Quercus infectoria, a species of oak growing in the Levant, and are produced by the Cynips Gallae tinctoriae. When gathered before the insects quit them, the nut-galls contain more astringent matter, and are then known as Black, Blue, or Green-galls. When the insects have escaped, they are less astringent, and are called White-galls. They are of great importance in the arts, being very extensively used in dyeing and in the manufacture of ink and leather. They are the most powerful of all the vegetable astringents, and are sometimes used, both internally and externally, with great effect in medicine. Those imported from Syria are the most esteemed, and, of these, those found in the neighborhood of Mosul are considered the best.
The gall of the field cirsium formerly enjoyed a very great reputation, for it was considered, when carried simply in the pocket, as a sovereign remedy against hemorrhages. It, no doubt, owed this virtue to its resemblance to the principal sign of this disease, the swelling of the vein.
The galls of the ground-ivy, produced by the Cynips glechomae, have been eaten as food in France; they have an agreeable taste, and to a high degree the odor of the plant which bears them. Reaumur, however, is doubtful whether they will ever rank with good fruits.
The galls of the sage (Salvia pomifera, S. triloba, and S. officinalis), which are very juicy, like apples, and crowned with rudiments of leaves resembling the calyx of that fruit, are gathered every year, as an article of food, by the inhabitants of the Island of Crete. This is the statement of Tournefort. Olivier confirms it, and adds: They are esteemed in the Levant for their aromatic and acid flavor, especially when prepared with honey and sugar, and form a considerable article of commerce from Scio to Constantinople, where they are regularly exposed in the market.
The celebrated "Dead Sea Fruits," often called Poma insana, or Mad-apples, Mala Sodomitica, etc., which have given rise to great controversy among Oriental scholars and Biblical commentators, are produced by the Cynips insana on the low oaks (Quercus infectoria) growing on the borders of the Dead Sea.
Formicidae — Ants
Herodotus, who wrote in the fifth century before the birth of Christ, tells the following fabulous story without the slightest trace of diffidence or disbelief: There are other Indians bordering on the City of Caspatyrus and the country of Pactyica, settled northward of the other Indians, whose mode of life resembles that of the Bactrians. They are the most warlike of the Indians, and these are they who are sent to procure the gold; for near this part is a desert by reason of the sand. In this desert then, and in the sand, there are Ants in size somewhat less indeed than dogs, but larger than foxes. Some of them are in the possession of the King of the Persians, which were taken there. These Ants, forming their habitations under ground, heap up the sand as the Ants in Greece do, and in the same manner; and they are very like them in shape. The sand that is heaped up is mixed with gold. The Indians, therefore, go to the desert to get this sand, each man having three camels, on either side a male one harnessed to draw by the side, and a female in the middle; this last the man mounts himself, having taken care to yoke one that has been separated from her young as recently as possible; for camels are not inferior to horses in swiftness, and are much better able to carry burdens. The Indians then, adopting such a plan and such a method of harnessing, set out for the gold, having before calculated the time, so as to be engaged in their plunder during the hottest part of the day, for during the heat the Ants hide themselves under ground. When the Indians arrive at the spot, having sacks with them, they fill these with the sand, and return with all possible expedition; for the Ants, as the Persians say, immediately discovering them by the smell, pursue them, and they are equaled in swiftness by no other animal, so that if the Indians did not get the start of them while the Ants were assembling, not a man of them could be saved. Now the male camels (for they are inferior in speed to the females) slacken their pace, dragging on, not both equally; but the females, mindful of the young they have left, do not slacken their pace. Thus the Indians, as the Persians say, obtain the greatest part of their gold.
Concerning these remarkable Ants, Strabo and Arrian have preserved the statement of Megasthenes, who traveled in India about two centuries later than the time of Herodotus. As given by Strabo, who is somewhat more particular in his story than Arrian, it is as follows: Megasthenes, speaking of the Myrmeces (or Ants), says, among the Derdae, a populous nation of the Indians, living toward the East and among the mountains, there was a mountain plain of about 3000 stadia in circumference; that below this plain were mines containing gold, which the Myrmeces, in size not less than foxes, dig up. They are excessively fleet, and subsist on what they catch. In winter they dig holes and pile up the earth in heaps, like moles, at the mouths of the openings. The gold dust which they obtain requires little preparation by fire. The neighboring people go after it by stealth with beasts of burden; for if it is done openly, the Myrmeces fight furiously, pursuing those that run away, and, if they seize them, kill them and the beasts. In order to prevent discovery, they place in various parts pieces of the flesh of wild beasts, and when the Myrmeces are dispersed in various directions, they take away the gold dust, and, not being acquainted with the mode of smelting it, dispose of it in its rude state at any price to merchants.
Nearchus says he has himself seen several of the skins of these Ants, which were as large as the skins of leopards. They were brought by the Macedonian soldiers into Alexander's camp.
Pliny, as a matter of course, believed this marvelous story, and has inserted it in brief in his compilation of natural history. He adds, too, that in his time there were suspended in the temple of Hercules, at Erythrae, this Ant's horns, which were looked upon as quite miraculous for their size. He also informs us it was of the color of a cat. Strabo and Arrian, from the manner in which they refer to the statements of Megasthenes and Nearchus, no doubt disbelieved them; not so, however, Pomponius Mela.
M. de Veltheim thinks this animal, which, as Pliny says, "has the color of a cat, and is in size as large as an Egyptian wolf," is nothing more than, and really is, the Canis corsac, the small fox of India, and that by some mistake it was represented by travelers 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. Another interpretation of this story has also been suggested. We find 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 Hindustan and Thibet) used to sell grains of gold, which they called paippilaka, or Ant-gold, which, they said, was thrown up by Ants, in Sanscrit called pippilika. In traveling westward, this story (in itself, no doubt, untrue) may very probably have been magnified to its present dimensions.
The laborious life and foresight of the Ant have been celebrated throughout all antiquity, and from the wise Solomon down to the amiable La Fontaine, the sluggard has been referred to this insect to "learn her ways and be wise." The Arabians held the wisdom of these animals in such estimation, that they used to place one of them in the hands of a newly-born infant, repeating these words: "May the boy turn out clever and skillful." But their wisdom is magnified by all, and in the panegyrics of their providence we always find the following curious notion. Plutarch, in his Land and Water Creatures Compared, thus mentions it: "But that which surpasseth all other prudence, policy, and wit, is their (the Ants') caution and prevention which they use, that their wheat and other corn may not spurt and grow. For this is certain, that dry it cannot continue always, nor sound and uncorrupt, but in time will wax soft, resolve into a milky juice, when it turneth and beginneth to swell and chit; for fear, therefore, that it become not a generative seed, and so by growing, lose the nature and property of food for their nourishment, they gnaw that end thereof or head where it is wont to spurt and bud forth."
The ancients, observing the Ants carry their pupae, which in shape, size, and color very much resemble a grain of corn, and the ends of which they sometimes pull open to let out the inclosed insect, no doubt mistook the one for the other, and this action for depriving the grain of the embryo of the plant.
Some modern writers, as Addison and Pluche, it is curious to observe, have fallen into this ancient error; so ancient, in fact, it is that some have supposed the Hebrew name of the Ant to be derived from it. Among the poets, Prior asks:
Tell me, why the Ant In summer's plenty thinks of winter's want? By constant journey careful to prepare Her stores, and bringing home the corny ear, By what instruction does she bite the grain? Lest, hid in earth, and taking root again, It might elude the foresight of her care.
Thus Watts, also:
They don't wear their time out in sleeping or play; But gather up corn in a sunshiny day, And for winter they lay up their stores: They manage their work in such regular forms, One would think they foresaw all the frosts and the storms, And so brought their food within doors.
And Smart:
The sage, industrious Ant, the wisest insect, And best economist of all the field: For when as yet the favorable sun Gives to the genial earth th' enlivening ray, All her subterranean avenues, And storm-proof cells, with management most meet, And unexampled housewifery, she frames; Then to the field she hies, and on her back Burden immense! brings home the cumbrous corn Then, many a weary step, and many a strain, And many a grievous groan subdued, at length Up the huge hill she hardly heaves it home; Nor rests she here her providence, but nips With subtle tooth the grain, lest garner'd from her In mischievous fertility, it steal, And back to daylight vegetate its way.
Milton also entertained this erroneous opinion:
First crept The parsimonious Emmet, provident Of future, in small room large heart inclos'd; Pattern of just equality perhaps Hereafter, join'd in her popular tribes Of commonalty.
And also Dr. Johnson:
Turn on the provident Ant thy heedless eyes, Observe her labors, sluggard! and be wise. No stern command, no monitory voice, Prescribes her duties or directs her choice; Yet timely provident she hastes away, To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day; When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain, She crops the harvest, and she stores the grain.