NOTE H.—GOLD-DIGGING ANTS Herodotos was the first writer who communicated to the Western nations the story of these ants. He relates it thus (iii. 102): “There are other Indians bordering on the city of Kaspatyros and the country of Paktyike (Afghânistân) settled northward of the other Indians, who resemble the Baktrians in the way they live. They are the most warlike of the Indians, and are the men whom they send to procure the gold (paid in tribute to the King of Persia), for their country adjoins the desert of sand. In this desert then and in the sand there are ants, in size not quite so big as dogs, but larger than foxes. Some that were captured were taken thence, and are with the King of the Persians. These ants, forming their dwelling underground, heap up the sand as the ants in Greece do, and in the same manner; and are very like them in shape. The sand which they cast up is mixed with gold. The Indians therefore go to the desert to get this sand, each man having three camels ... (c. 105). When the Indians arrive at the spot they fill their sacks with the sand, and return home with all possible speed. For the ants, as the Persians say, having readily discovered them by the smell, pursue them, and, as they are the swiftest of all animals, not one of the Indians could escape except by getting the start while the ants were assembling.” Nearchos (quoted by Strabo, xv. 705) says that he saw skins of the ants which dig up gold as large as the skins of leopards. Megasthenes also (as quoted in the same passage) says that among the Dardai, a populous nation of the Indians living towards the east and among the mountains, there was a mountain plain of about 3000 stadia in circumference, below which were mines containing gold, which ants not less in size than foxes dig up. In winter they dig holes and pile up the earth in heaps, like moles, at the pit-mouths. Pliny (xi. 31) repeats the story in these terms: “The horns of the Indian ant fixed up in the temple of Hercules at Erythrae were objects of great wonderment. These ants excavate gold from mines found in the country of those Northern Indians who are called the Dardae. They are of the colour of cats and of the size of Egyptian wolves. The Indians steal the gold which they dig up in winter during the hot season when the ants keep within their burrows to escape the stifling sultriness of the weather. The ants, however, aroused by the smell, sally out and frequently overtake and mangle the robbers, though they have the swiftest of camels to aid their flight.” It is now understood that the gold-digging ants were neither, as the ancients supposed, an extraordinary kind of real ants, nor, as many learned men have since supposed, larger 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.