being covered with scales like a sturgeon.” A.D. 1432. (T. Wright’s Early Travels in Palestine, p. 290)
(Bohn). It is remarkable to find the statement that these ants were found in the possession of the King
of Persia recurring in Herodotus and in Busbeck, with an interval of nearly 2000 years! We see that
the suggestion of the Manis being the gold-digging ant has been anticipated by Mr. Blakesley in his
Herodotus. [“It is now understood that the gold-digging ants were neither, as ancients supposed, an
extraordinary kind of real ants, nor, as many learned men have since supposed, large animals mistaken
for ants, but Tibetan miners who, like their descendants of the present day, preferred working their mines
in winter when the frozen soil stands well and is not likely to trouble them by falling in. The Sanskrit
word pipilika denotes both an ant and a particular kind of gold” (McCrindle, Ancient India, its Invasion
by Alexander the Great, p. 341 seq.]
c. B.C. 445.—“Here in this desert, there live amid the sand great ants, in size somewhat less than dogs,
but bigger than foxes. The Persian King has a number of them, which have been caught by the hunters
in the land whereof we are speaking. …”—Herod. iii. 102 (Rawlinson’s tr.).
1562.—Among presents to the
G. Turk from the King of Persia: “in his inusitati generis animantes, qualem memini dictum fuisse allatam
formicam Indicam mediocris canis magnitudine, mordacem admodum et saevam.”—Busbequii Qpera,
Elzev., 1633, p. 343.
