2=JO 



ANTS. 



limbs and projecting antennae intertwining, form a sort of net-work 

 that seems t<> answer well for their object. Whenever an alarm is 

 given the arch is instantly broken, and the ants, joining others of the 

 same class on the outside of the line, who seem to be acting as com- 

 manders, guides and scouts, run about in a furious manner in pursuit 

 of the enemy. If the alarm should prove to be without foundation, 

 the victory won or the danger passed, the arch is quickly renewed, and 

 the main column marches forward as before in all the order of an 

 intellectual military discipline." This habit of hanging together in 

 clusters by means of their hooked' claws and slender legs is very strik- 

 ing. Savage saw a colony camping on a tree : " From the lower limbs 

 ( four feet high ) were festoons or lines of the size of a man's thumb, 

 reaching to the plants and ground below, consisting entirely of these 

 insects ; others were ascending and descending upon them, thus holding 

 free and ready communication with the lower and upper portions of 



this dense mass. One of these festoons 

 I saw in the act of formation ; it was a 

 good way advanced when first observed : 

 ant after ant coming down from above, 

 extending their long limbs and opening 

 wide their jaws, gradually lengthened 

 out the living chain till it touched the 

 broad leaf of a Canna cocdnca below. 

 It now swung to and fro in the wind, 

 the terminal ant the meanwhile endeavor- 

 ing to attach it by his jaws and legs to 

 the leaf; not succeeding, another ant of 

 the same class (the very largest) was 

 seen to ascend the plant, and, fixing his 

 hind legs with the apex of the abdomen 

 firmly to the leaf under the vibrating 

 column, then reaching with his fore-legs 

 and opening wide his jaws, closed in 

 with his companion from above, and thus 

 completed the most curious ladder in the 

 world." These living chains are also 

 made for the purpose of bridging small streams. The peculiar cluster- 

 ing habit was also observed by Savage during inundations when these 

 insects resort to the same means of survival as Solcnopsis getninata in 

 tropical America. ' In such an emergency they throw themselves into a 

 rounded mass, deposit their ' feebler folk," pupae and eggs in the center, 



FIG. 143. Worker of /Enictus 

 aitkeni of India. (Bingham.) 



