NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 5 



discovered that the belligerent parties were the subjects of two neighboring- 

 kingdoms, or hives, each of which, as I could distinguish, by the arrival of 

 their reinforcements, were coming from two different post-oak trees, which 

 were standing about fifty yards apart, and the office-yard being very nearly the 

 half-way ground, afforded me good opportunity to determine that the contend- 

 ing parlies belonged to distinct communities, and not to the same hive. 



The battle continued unabated, until the darkness of the night prevented 

 further observation. I left them to their fate, with my feelings so highly excited 

 that I did not rest well that night. Before sunrise the next morning I visited 

 the battle field, and found it thickly strewed with the legless, hapless warriors, as 

 described above. There could not have been less than 40,000 left on the ground 

 who were utterly incapacitated to help themselves. A few of them had a single 

 leg left. "With this they made shift to pull themselves incessantly around in a 

 very limited circle. The larger proportion of them lay prost'ate, writhing and 

 doubling, and vainly straining their agonized, limbless bodies in a stateof mental 

 abandonmentand furious desperation. Few were dead. All the dead on a 8 that I 

 saw, did not exceed perhaps a hundred ; and these were found universally in 

 pairs, mutually grappling each other by the throat. With a few of these pa'rs of 

 unyielding warriors, life was not entirely extinct. My sympathies being painfnlly 

 excited, 1 made an effort, where there were signs of vitality, to separate them. 

 In this ! did not succeed. On closer scrutiny, I found that they had fixed their 

 caliper-like mandibles in each others throat, and were gripped together with 

 such inveterate malignity, that they could not be separated without tearing off 

 their heads. 



I had swept them up in a heap, and as the most humane method of curtailing 

 the wretched condition of the poor, ruined victims of the bloody strife I couid 

 think of, was making a bole in the ground, with the intention of entombing 

 the whole of them, Whig and Tory together, and by filling the grave with water, 

 drown them. But before I had completed ray arrangements, there came a heavy 

 shower of rain, which soon overwhelmed them with mud and water, thereby 

 relieving me from the painful task. 



It is perhaps nothing amiss to state here, that among the slain the van- 

 quished I saw no type of the species, except the neutrals, or working type. 

 As on the ensanguined fields of the arrogant genus homo, the conjuring priests 

 and better bloods of the self-created nobility, after raising the/*s, had found 

 it convenient to have business in some safer quarter. 



This ant dwells in live trees, in large swarms, or more properly communities, 

 and feeds principally on insects. On this account he is useful. It is a fortu- 

 nate thing for any family to have a large tree netr their dwelling that contains 

 a community of this civil but warlike species of ant. 



Near the western corner of my dwel.itig, for eight years, stood a post oik 

 tree Quercus obtusiloba which contained a quite populous community of the 

 black tree ant in question. During the eight years that the tree survived, it 

 was the custom of these ants to visit every portion of the house, every night in 

 warm weather; search out all hidden cracks and crevices, in walls, bedsteads, 

 and furniture, in fact, travel over every thing about the house, except the 

 clothing; upon any woven texture they do not travel. In all that eight years, 

 we had no fleas, bed bugs, or any other insect annoyances. But when the tree 

 died, \r which they had their home, they went away, and we have missed them 

 much, as, since their departure, we have been forced to scald and wash out the 

 house often, to clear it of annoying insects. We should be happy in the ac- 

 knowledgment of our dependence on the services of another such community. 



This species of ant is the largest that is found in Texas. He is quite black, 

 and disdaining the grovelling habits of the burrowing tribes of the genus, he 

 constructs his habitation in the live trees. As far as my observation goes, 

 however, he dwells only in the cedars and post oaks. Very seldom found 

 in a tree that has been long dead. In the construction of the habitation for the 



1866.] 



