“In September, 1814,” says Dr. Bromley, surgeon of the Clorinde, in a letter to Mr. MacLeay, “being on the deck of the hulk to the Clorinde (then in the river Medway), my attention was drawn to the water by the first lieutenant observing there was something black floating down the tide. On looking with a glass, I discovered they were insects. The boat was sent, and brought a bucketful of them on board; they proved to be a large species of Ant, and extended from the upper part of Salt-pan Reach out toward the Great Nore, a distance of five or six miles. The column appeared to be in breadth eight or ten feet, and in height about six inches, which I suppose must have been from their resting one upon another.”[573] Purchas seems to have witnessed a similar phenomenon on shore. “Other sorts of Ants,” says he, “there are many, of which some become winged, and fill the air with swarms, which sometimes happens in England. On Bartholomew, 1613, I was in the island of Foulness, on our Essex shore, where were such clouds of these flying pismires, that we could nowhere flee from them, but they filled our clothes; yea, the floors of some houses where they fell were in a manner covered with a black carpet of creeping Ants, which they say drown themselves about that time of the year in the sea.”[574] When Colonel Sir Augustus Frazer, of the British horse-artillery, was surveying, on the 6th of October, 1813, the scene of the battle of the Pyrenees from the summit of the mountain called Pena de Aya, or Les Quartres Couronnes, he and his friends were enveloped by a swarm of Ants, so numerous as entirely to intercept their view, so that they were obliged to remove to another station in order to get rid of them.[575] “Not long since,” says Josselyn in his Voyage to New England, London, 1674, “winged Ants were poured down upon the Lands out of the clouds in a storm betwixt _Blackpoint_ and _Saco_, where the passenger might have walkt up to the Ancles in them.”[576] Wingless Ants, in swarms or armies, also migrate at particular seasons; but for what purpose is not clear, except to obtain better forage. In Guiana, Mr. Waterton says he has met with a colony of a species of small Ant marching in order, each having in its mouth a leaf; and the army extended three miles in length, and was six feet broad.[577]