258 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The true working-class of a colony is formed by the small-sized 

 order of workers (1, Fig. 1). The two other kinds have enormously- 

 swollen heads ; in one of these the head is highly polished (2) ; in the 

 other (3) it is opaque and hairy. The worker-minors vary greatly 

 in size, some being double the bulk of others. The entire body is of 

 solid consistence, and of a pale, reddish-brown color. The thorax, or 

 middle segment, is armed with three pairs of sharp spines ; the head 

 also has a pair of similar spines proceeding from the cheeks behind. 









'T^'^''^ 



'^^^ 



^^z^'^r. 



'**X.-^^^w. - 



I^^S^e^-.;^ - ' 



Fig. 1. SAtjBA, OR Leap-cuttikq Ant. 1, Worker-minor; 2, Worker-major ; 3, Subterranean 



Worker. 



Their domes or outworks are very extensive, some of them being 

 forty yards in circumference, but not more than two feet high. The 

 entrances are small and numerous ; in the large hillocks a great 

 amount of excavation is required to get at the main galleries ; the 

 minor entrances converge at arfew feet below the ground to one broad, 

 elaborately-worked gallery or mine four or five inches in diameter. 

 These underground abodes are very extensive. The Rev. Hamlet 

 Clark relates that the satiba of Rio de Janeiro has excavated a tunnel 

 imder the bed of the river Parahyba, at a place where it is as broad as 

 the Thames at London Bridge. At the Magoary Rice-Mills, near 

 Para, these ants once pierced the embankment of a large reservoir ; 

 the great body of water which it contained escaping before the dam- 

 age could be repaired. One other fact is told of these ants, which 

 shows the herculean nature of their labors. Their lives are dependent 

 upon access to water, and they always choose places where it is to 

 be obtained by digging wells. One case is related where a well was 

 dug for domestic purposes, and water found at a depth of thirty feet ; 

 to do this, an ant-well was followed Avhich was twelve inches in di- 

 ameter. 



The habit in this ant of clipping and carrying away immense quan- 

 tities of leaves has long been recorded. When employed in this work, 

 their processions look like a multitude of animated leaves on the march. 

 They mount the trees in swarms. Each one places itself on the sur- 

 face of a leaf, and cuts with its sharp, scissor-like jaws a nearly semi- 



