THE DRIl'ER AND LEGIONARY ANTS. 261 



" Besides the changes of domicile, which are so generally in relation 

 with the atmospheric variation as to serve as a rule to the inhabitants 

 of the country, the Eciton devotes itself every season to excursions for 

 pillage, destined to supply the larvae with nourishment. Nothing is 

 more curious than these battues executed by an entire population. 

 Over an extent of many square meters, the soil literally disappears 

 under the agglomeration of their little black bodies. No apparent 

 order reigns in the mass of the army, but behind this many lines or 

 columns of laggards press on to rejoin it. The insects concealed under 

 the dry' leaves and the trunks of fallen trees fly on all sides before this 

 phalanx of pitiless hunters, but, blinded by fright, they fall back among 

 their persecutors and are seized and despatched in the twinkling of an 

 eye. Grasshoppers, in spite of the advantage given them by their 

 power of leaping, hardly escape any more easily. As soon as they are 

 taken, the Eciton tears off the hinder feet and all resistance becomes 

 useless. 



' If some heap of dry leaves, some tree or bush presents itself upon 

 the path of the columns, a party of hunters separates itself from the 

 mass of the army, and, after having ransacked it in every part, retakes 

 its place in the advance guard. I have observed, sometimes, that little 

 flies, of the family Syrphides, follow, flying above them, the column 

 of Eciton, but cannot give any account of the evolution of these 

 Diptera. 1 



" It is probable that the Ecitons attack the larvae and pupae of other 

 ants to make them serve as food for the nourishment of their own 

 larvae or for sustaining themselves. I surprised, one day, in the first 

 hours of a sombre and rainy morning, a considerable assemblage of 

 tcpcyuas [E. forcli] fastened one upon another like a swarm of bees 

 and entirely still. Having dispersed them I perceived in the place 

 which they covered with their bodies a quantity of little white larvae, 

 brought away doubtless, from the nests of some Myrmicidae. At 

 another time I witnessed the pillage of a nursery of other ants by a 

 quite enormous band of workers minores [E. hamatum] ; alarmed by 

 the reprisals which I made on their account, they took to flight, some 

 of them carrying between their mandibles as many as three larvae at 

 once. Among the Mexican species of the genus Eciton, that to which 

 they apply more specially the name of soldados [E. prcedator], may be 

 noticed for the habit which it has of invading the habitations of the 

 country. These visits ordinarily take place at the beginning of the 



1 These " Syrphids " probably belong to the Conopid genus Stylogastcr, of 

 which Townsend (1897) found three species hovering over troops of Eciton, 

 in the lowlands of the Rio Naubla, in the state of Vera Cruz, Mexico. 



