208 cook's first voyage august* 



had profaned a consecrated grove, where every 

 tree, upon being wounded, gave signs of life ; for we 

 were instantly covered with legions of these animals, 

 swarming from every broken bough, and inflicting 

 their stings with incessant violence. They are 

 mentioned by Rumphius in his Herbarium Amboi- 

 nense, vol. ii. p. 257- ; but the tree in which he saw 

 their dwelling, is very different from that in which 

 we found them. 



A third kind we found nested in the root of a 

 plant, which grows on the bark of trees in the man- 

 ner of misletoe, and which they had perforated 

 for that use. This root is commonly ,as big as a 

 large turnip, and sometimes much bigger : when we 

 cut it, we found it intersected by innumerable wind- 

 ing passages, all filled with these animals, by which 

 however the vegetation of the plant did not appear 

 to have suffered any injury. We never cut one of 

 these roots that was not inhabited, though some were 

 not bigger than a hazle-nut. The animals them- 

 selves are very small, not more than half as big as the 

 common red ant in England. They had stings, but 

 scarcely force enough to make them felt ; they had 

 however a power of tormenting us in an equal, if not 

 a greater degree ; for the moment we handled the 

 root, they swarmed from innumerable holes, and run- 

 ning about those parts of the body that were un- 

 covered, produced a titillation more intolerable than 

 pain, except it is increased to great violence. Rum- 

 phius has also given an account of this bulb and its 

 inhabitants, vol. vi. p. 120. where he mentions an- 

 other sort that are black. 



We found a fourth kind, which are perfectly 

 harmless, and almost exactly resemble the white ants 

 of the East Indies ; the architecture of these is still 

 more curious than that of the others. They have 

 houses of two sorts, one is suspended on the branches 

 of trees, and the other erected upon the ground: those 

 upon the trees are about three or four times as big as 



