92 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



the hosts left his plants to attend to home-affairs, and the removal of 

 dead ants, food, and undeveloped larvae and pupae from their dwell- 

 ings to a new home, was carried on with extraordinary zeal. The old 

 burrow was deserted, and their ravages for a time suppressed. Corro- 

 sive sublimate makes the ants mad and furious. A little of the powder 

 was sprinkled in one of their paths ; so soon as the ants touched it, 

 they ran wildly about attacking others, and very soon compact masses, 

 or balls of ants, would be found biting each other. Huge fellows from 

 the formicaries, measuring three-quarters of an inch in length, came 

 forth to set matters right, but on touching the poison their bravery 

 forsook them. They attacked others, and were themselves attacked, 

 and became the centres of balls of furious ants. 



Many indigenous trees escape their ravages, evidently because dis- 

 tasteful. Through long ages the ants and trees of tropical America 

 have become somewhat modified together. All plants disliked by ants 

 have a great advantage over others, and thus a selection has gone on, 

 in which introduced species do not share. The lime is less liked than 

 the orange or the citron, and, while these are inevitably destroyed, 

 unless protected, the lime would probably survive; and Mr. Belt judi- 

 ciously remarks that a little more or less acridity, or a slight chemical 

 difference in the composition of the tissues of a leaf, so small that it is 

 inappreciable to our senses, may be sufficient to insure the preserva- 

 tion or the destruction of a species throughout an entire continent. 

 The paths of these ants ramify in every direction from their abodes, 

 and are more thronged than the streets of London. They seek the 

 open spaces near margins of the forest, and excavate a series of gal- 

 leries, which are the scene of manifold operations. Continually the 

 workers bring in burdens consisting chiefly of fragments of leaves. 

 Naturalists have differed as to the use to which these leaves are put. 

 Some suppose they are used as food, others, to line theii' galleries ; the 

 explanation given by Mr. Belt is, that the leaves are used as a manure, 

 on which grows a minute fungus, which is the food of the ants ; that 

 they are, in reality, mushroom growers and eaters. This extraordinary 

 conclusion he arrived at by careful observations. He repeatedly ex- 

 plored their nests, which are a series of rounded chambers about as 

 large as a man's head, connected by tunneled passages leading from 

 one chamber to another. In the burrows the leaves could never be 

 found in quantity ; they were evidently directly used up ; but the 

 chambers were about three-fourths filled with a speckled-brown, 

 spongy-lcoking mass. Throughout this were ants with pupae and 

 larvae. Upon careful examination, it proved to be minutely subdivided 

 leaves, brown and withered, overgrown and lightly connected by a mi- 

 nute, white fungus, that ramified in every direction through it. This 

 fungus was found in every chamber opened, and in the midst of it ant- 

 nurses and immature ants. When the nests were disturbed, this fun- 

 o-us, or ant-food, was guarded with great care, and every atom of it 



