These devouring Ants showed themselves about the year 1760 in Barbados, and caused such devastations that, in the words of Dr. Coke, "it was deliberated whether that island, formerly so flourishing, should not be deserted." In 1763, Martinique was visited by these devastating hordes; and about the year 1770 they made their appearance in the island of Granada. Barbados, Granada, and Martinique suffered more than any other islands from this plague. Granada especially was reduced to a state of the most deplorable desolation; for, it is said, their numbers there were so immense that they covered the roads for many miles together; and so crowded were they in many places that the impressions made by the feet of horses, which traveled over them, would remain visible but for a moment or two, for they were almost instantly filled up by the surrounding swarms. Mr. Schomburgk assures us that calves, pigs, and chickens, when in a helpless state, were attacked by such large numbers of these Ants that they perished, and were soon reduced to skeletons when not timely assisted. It is asserted by Dr. Coke that the greatest precaution was requisite to prevent their attacks on men who were afflicted with sores, on women who were confined, and on children that were unable to assist themselves. Mr. Castle, from his own observation, states that even burning coals laid in their way, were extinguished by the amazing numbers which rushed upon them.
Notwithstanding the myriads that were destroyed by fire, water, poison, and other means, the devastations continued to such an alarming extent, that in 1776 the government of Martinique offered a reward of a million of their currency for a remedy against this plague; and the legislature of Granada offered £20,000 for the same object; but all attempts proved ineffectual until the hurricane in 1780 effected what human power had been unable to accomplish.
In 1814, the Ants again made their appearance in the island of Barbados, doing considerable injury; but happily they did not continue long.
Malouet, in visiting the forests of Guiana, of which he has spoken in his travels into that part of the globe, perceived in the midst of a level savanna, as far as the eye could reach, a hillock which he would have attributed to the hand of man, if M. de Prefontaine, who accompanied him, had not informed him that, in spite of its gigantic construction, it was the work of black Ants of the largest species (most probably of the genus Ponera). He proposed to conduct him, not to the Ant-hill, where both of them would infallibly have been devoured, but to the road of the workers. M. Malouet did not approach within more than forty paces of the habitation of these insects. It had the form of a pyramid truncated at one-third of its height, and he estimated that its elevation might be about fifteen or twenty feet, on a basis of from thirty to forty. M. de Prefontaine told him that the cultivators were obliged to abandon a new establishment, when they had the misfortune to meet with one of these fortresses, unless they had sufficient strength to form a regular siege. This even occurred to M. de Prefontaine himself on his first encampment at Kourou. He was desirous of forming a second a little farther on, and perceived upon the soil a mound of earth similar to that which we have just described. He caused a circular trench to be hollowed, which he filled with a great quantity of dry wood, and, after having set fire to it in every point of its circumference, he attacked the Ant-hill with a train of artillery. Thus every issue was closed to the hostile army, which, to escape from the invasion of the flames and the shaking and plowing of the ground by the cannon-balls, was obliged to traverse, in its retreat, a trench filled with fire, where it was entirely cut off.
The Portuguese found such prodigious numbers of Ants upon their first landing at Brazil, that they called them Rey de Brazil, King of Brazil, a name which they now there bear.
Mr. Southey states, on the authority of Manoel Felix, that the Red-ants devoured the cloths of the altar in the Convent of S. Antonio, or S. Luiz (Maranham, Brazil), and also brought up into the church pieces of shrouds from the graves; whereupon the friars prosecuted them according to due form of ecclesiastical law. What the sentence was in this case, we are unable to learn. A similar case, however, the historian informs us, had occurred in the Franciscan Convent at Avignon, where the Ants did so much mischief that a suit was instituted against them, and they were excommunicated, and ordered by the friars, in pursuance of their sentence, to remove within three days to a place assigned them in the center of the earth. The Canonical account gravely adds, that the Ants obeyed, and carried away all their young, and all their stores.
Annius writes, that an ancient city situate near the Volscian Lake, and called Contenebra, was in times past overthrown by Ants, and that the place was thereupon commonly called to his day, "the camp of the Ants."
Ctesias makes mention "of a horse-pismire (i.e. the bigger kind of them in hollow trees) which was fed by the Magi, till he grew to such a vast bulk as to devour two pound of flesh a day."
Martial has written the following beautiful epigram on an Ant inclosed in amber: "While an Ant was wandering under the shade of the tree of Phaeton, a drop of amber enveloped the tiny insect; thus she, who in life was disregarded, became precious by death.
"A drop of amber from the weeping plant, Fell unexpected and embalmed an Ant; The little insect we so much contemn Is, from a worthless Ant, become a gem."
It has been said, remarks Mr. Southey, and regarded as a vulgar error, that Ants cannot pass over a line of chalk: the fact, however, is certain. Mr. Coleridge tried the experiment at Malta, he continues, and immediately discovered the cause: The formic acid is so powerful, that it acts upon the chalk, and the legs of the insect are burnt by the instantaneous effervescence!
Paxamus says, that if you take some Ants and burn them, you will drive away the others, as experience has taught us. Ants also, he continues, will not touch a vessel with honey, although the vessel may happen to be without its cover, if you wrap it in white wool, or if you scatter white earth or ruddle round it. If a person, continues Paxamus, takes a grain of wheat carried by an Ant with the thumb of his left hand, and lays it in a skin of Phoenician dye, and ties it round the head of his wife, it will prove to be the cause of abortion in a state of gestation.
Pliny says the proper remedy for the venom of the Solipuga or Solpuga Ant, and for that of all kinds of Ants, is a bat's heart.
Callicrates used to make Ants, and other such little creatures, out of ivory, with so much skill and ingenuity that other men could not discern the counterfeits from the originals even with the help of glasses.
Vespidae — Wasps, Hornets
Concerning the generation of the Wasp, Topsel and Moufet have the following: "Isidore affirms that Wasps come out of the putrefied carcasses of asses, although he may be mistaken, for all agree that the Scarabees are procreated from them: rather am I of opinion with Pliny, l. ii. c. 20, and the Greek authors, that they are sprung from the dead bodies of horses, for the horse is a valiant and warlike creature, hence is that verse frequently and commonly used among the Greeks:
Wasps come from horses, Bees from bulls are bred.
And indeed their more than ordinary swiftness and their eagerness in fight, are sufficient arguments that they can take their original from no other creature (much less from an ass, hart, or ox) since that Nature never granted to any creatures else, to excel both in swiftness and valor. And surely that I may give another sense of that proverb of Aristotle,
Hail the daughters of the wing-footed steed:
this would I suppose fit to be spoken in way of jest and scorn to scolding women, which do imitate the hastiness and froward disposition of the Wasp. Other sorts of them are produced out of the putrid corps of the Crocodiles, if Horus and the Egyptians be to be believed, for which reason when they mean a Wasp, they set it forth by an horse or crocodile. Nicander gives them the name lycosuadon, because they sometimes come from the dead carcasses of wolves. Bellenacensis and Vincentius say, that Wasps come out of the putrefaction of an old deer's head, flying sometimes out of the eyes, sometimes out of the nostrils. . . . There are those also that affirm that Wasps are begotten of the earth and rottenness of some kind of fruits, as Albertus and the Arabic scholiast."
Of the Hornet, likewise, these writers tell the following fabulous stories: "The Latins call the Hornets Crabrones, perchance from the village Crabra in the country of Tusculum (where there are great store of them), or from the word Caballus, i.e. a horse, who is said to be their father. According to that of Ovid, Met. 15:
The warlike horse if buried under ground, Shortly a brood of Hornets will be found.
Albertus calls it a yellow Bee. Cardanus will needs have them to arise from the dead mule. Plutarch, in the life of Cleomenes, saith they come out of horse flesh, as the Bees do out of the ox his paunch. Virgil saith they are produced of the ass. ... I conceive that those are produced of the harder flesh of the horse, and the Wasps of the more tender flesh."
The Hornet (but whether or not it was the common species, Vespa crabro, Linn., is uncertain), we learn from Scriptures was employed by Providence to drive out the impious inhabitants of Canaan, and subdue them under the hand of the Israelites. — "And I sent the Hornet before you, which drove them out before you, even the two kings of the Amorites."
In the second volume of Lieutenant Holman's Travels, the following anecdote is related: "Eight miles from Grandie, the muleteers suddenly called out 'Marambundas! Marambundas!' which indicated the approach of Wasps. In a moment all the animals, whether loaded or otherwise, lay down on their backs, kicking most violently; while the blacks, and all persons not already attacked, ran away in different directions, all being careful, by a wide sweep, to avoid the swarms of tormentors that came forward like a cloud. I never witnessed a panic so sudden and complete, and really believe that the bursting of a water-spout could hardly have produced more commotion. However, it must be confessed that the alarm was not without good reason, for so severe is the torture inflicted by these pigmy assailants, that the bravest travelers are not ashamed to fly, the instant they perceive the host approaching, which is of common occurrence on the Campos."
Dr. Fairfax, in the Philosophical Transactions, mentions a lady, who had such a horror of Wasps, that during the season in which they abound in houses, she always confined herself to her apartment.
Dr. James tells us: "The combs (of the Hornet) are recommended in a drench for that disorder in horses, which Vegetius, L. 2, c. 23, calls scrofula, meaning, I believe, what we call the strangles."
Hornets'-nest is smoked under horses' noses for distemper, cold in the head, and such like diseases. It is also given to horses in their feed for thick-windedness.
The nests of Hornets are gathered by the country people to clean spectacles.