ANSTEY, CHRISTOPHER, 1724-1805, an English poet; educated at Eton and designed for the church, but failing to get his degree, he returned to private life. Ile entered the army, and sat in parliament. Among A.'s works are the New Bath Guide, the Election Ball, and some others now forgotten.
AN'STRUTHEIt (EASTER and WESTER), two contiguous royal burghs of Fifeshire, 9 m. s. of St. Andrews, with which, along with Crail, Cupar, Kilrenny, and Pittenweem, they join in returning a member to parliament. Fishing, fish-curing, and tanning are the chief occupations. East A. is the birthplace of Dr. Chalmers, Tennant the poet, and Goodsir the anatomist. Pop. of both burghs, '71, 1653.
ANT, Formica, a Linntean genus of hymenopterous insects, now divided into several genera, which form a family called formicida. The English name is contracted from emmet, still also occasionally used. Another old English name, not now in frequent use, is pismire. The species arc numerous, and are generally distributed over temperate and tropical regions. Their habits and instincts are extremely interesting, and have attracted attention from remote ages.
Ants are small insects, but.of extraordinary muscular strength. They carry loads of ten or twelve times their own weight, and display great activity. They have a triangu lar head; the antennae are geniculate; the jaws strong; the ligula or lower lip small, rounded, vaulted or spoon-like; the thorax compressed at the sides; the abdomen nearly oval, the pedicle which joins it to the thorax forming in some kinds a single and in sonic a double scale or knot. They live in societies, often very large, which consist, as in bees, of males, females, and neuters. The neuters arc females with imperfect ovaries, trans formed at an early stage of their existence, and are distinguished into two classes, ?corkers and soldiers, the former constituting the greater portion of each society, the latter some• what differing from them in larger size and larger and more powerful head. The ordi nary work of the society is performed by the workers: the principal part in warfare, defensive or offensive, is taken by the soldiers. The males and females Constitute but a small portion of each community. They have delicate glistening wings; but the neuters have no wings, and the thorax is smaller and more compressed. The males are smaller than the females, and the workers are rather smaller than the males. The females and neuters of some kinds (genera ponera, myrmira, atta, and cryptoceru.$) are armed with stings; other kinds (formica and polyeryus) have no sting, but have the power of ejecting a peculiar volatile acid, FORMIC ACID (q.v.), from a small sac in the abdomen; by this
means effectually repelling many adversaries, to which the pungent fumes are intolerable. Small animals are soon killed by the vapor of an ant-hill; and a dog has been known to retire yelling from the effect upon his eyes, either of the vapor, or of a discharge of the fluid itself. It is said that when those ants that are unprovided with a sting make use of their mandibles to inflict a bite, they curve round their abdomen, so as to be ready immediately to squirt this acid into the wound.
The winged ants mostly appear in autumn, and perish before the commencement of the cold weather; a few surviving to found new colonies and perpetuate the race. The neuters pass the winter in large numbers in a torpid state, and resume their activity on the return of spring. The nests of ants, after midsummer, are usually found to con tam winged males and females mixed with the wingless neuters, which, however, restrain them, and particularly the females, from making their escape into the air, until the pairing season, when they ascend into it in immense swarms, those from many ant-hills sometimes uniting their myriads, rising with incredible velocity in distinct columns, and soaring to a great height. "Each column looks like a kind of slender net-work, and has a tremulous undulating motion. The noise emitted by myriads and myriads of these creatures does not exceed the hum of a single wasp. The slightest zephyr disperses them." They occasionally, however, make their appearance in such prodigious numbers that the air is obscured by them.—The of ants is supposed to take place in the air. Some of the females which escape destruction by their enemies, or by the elements, found new colonies, in which at first they perform the work usually assigned to neuters. Some, however, are seized by the neuters of ant-hills near which they fall, and there is even reason to think that these go out to search for them; they are stripped of their wings, and forcibly conducted to the habitation, the number of whose inhabitants is to be increased by their multitudinous progeny. They are fed and treated with apparent respect, like the queen-bee among bees; but a society of ants, unlike one of bees, often contains numerous females, each thus treated and equally employed in the important work of eggs. Unlike the queen-bees, also, they are invariably denuded of their wings; nor is this always done by the neuters, to prevent their escape, but the female ant, after fecundation, has been seen to denude herself of her own wings, as now superfluous appendages.