Liberia 



(*- 



the bite being rendered the more painful by the injection of 

 formic acid. 



The minute yellow-red ants so abundant throughout the 

 tropics that live chiefly on sugar or sweet food swarm, of course, 

 in the houses of the coast region, and special precautions have 

 to be taken in larders and store-rooms to place biscuits and 

 other sweet things that are not sealed up in receptacles of water. 

 These ants can be kept at bay by giving them a small depth 

 of water to cross, as they are unable to swim. 



There are also large pale grey ants, possibly of the species 

 Paltothyreus pestilentius, emitting a most offensive odour. 

 These creatures seem to go about in couples or singly, and 

 their defence no doubt is the intolerable stench that they emit 

 from their bodies. They and this smell, however, are sometimes 

 associated with an antlike insect of the closely allied family 

 of Mutillidd; — the wingless, white-spotted female (?) of the 

 genus Apterogyna. Usually this form of antlike bee is captured 

 by the European as the author of the horrible stench, which 

 (as in the pismire ants) is really produced by the Paltothyreus. 



It would be interesting if naturalists in Liberia would 

 try to study the relations between ant-eating mammals, reptiles 

 and birds, and the true ants of the driver and leaf-nesting 



o 



types. So far as our observations go, the manis ant-eaters 

 described in Chapter XXIII. , together with the burrowing snakes 

 and lizards, seem chiefly to attack the termites or " white ants." 

 I'hese last, though they are very destructive to property because 

 of- their attacks on wood and paper, are nevertheless far less 

 serious pests than the true ants of the predatory kind referred 

 to. Is the manis, for example, with its upper coat of scales 

 and its tough skin, proof against the bites of the driver ? When 

 it licks up driver ants with its viscous tongue, can it subsequently 

 in its mouth detach them from the tongue (into which they 



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