120 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 



except in matters of detail, all the species of Ecitons have 

 much the same habits. Mr. Bates records an interesting 

 observation which he made on one of the moving columns 

 of this species. He says : ' When I interfered with the 

 column or abstracted an individual from it, news of the 

 disturbance was quickly communicated to a distance of 

 several yards to the rear, and the column at that point 

 commenced retreating.' The main column is in this 

 species narrower, viz., ' from four to six deep,' but extends 

 to a great length, viz., half a mile or more. It was this 

 species of Eciton that the same naturalist describes as en- 

 joying periods of leisure and recreation in the ( sunny 

 nooks of the forest.' 



Next we have to consider E. prcedator, of which the 

 same observer writes : 



This is a small dark reddish species, very similar to the 

 common red stinging ant of England. It differs from all other 

 Ecitons in its habit of hunting, not in columns, but in dense 

 phalanxes consisting of myriads of individuals, and was firet met 

 with at Ega, where it is very common. Nothing in insect 

 movements is more striking than tne rapid march of these 

 large and compact bodies. Wherever they pass, all the rest of 

 the animal world is thrown into a state of alarm. They stream 

 along the ground and climb to the summits of all the lower 

 trees, searching every leaf to its apex, and whenever they en- 

 counter a mass of decaying vegetable matter, where booty is 

 plentiful, they concentrate, like other Ecitons, all their forces 

 upon it, the dense phalanx of shining and quickly-moving 

 bodies, as it spreads over the surface, looking like a flood of 

 dark red liquid. They soon penetrate every part of the con- 

 fused heap, and then, gathering together again in marching 

 order, onward they move. All soft-bodied and inactive insects 

 fall an easy prey to them, and, like other Ecitons, they tear 

 their victims in pieces for facility of carriage. A phalanx of 

 this species, when passing over a tract of smooth ground, occu- 

 pies a space of from four to six square yards ; on examining 

 the ants closely they are seen to move, not all together in one 

 straightforward direction, but in variously spreading contiguous 

 columns, now separating a little from the general mass, now 

 reuniting with it. The margins of the phalanx spread out at 

 times like a cloud of skirmishers from the flanks of an army 

 1 was never able to find the hive of this species. 



