ANTS. 119 



if their store of corn becomes damp, it is brought up into the 

 open air to dry. They are exceedingly cleanly, shampooing them- 

 selves and each other frequently, especially after eating or sleep- 

 ing, and whenever they are in ease and comfort. M'Cook has 

 sometimes seen Atta Crudelis yawning and stretching itself after 

 awaking from a sound sleep. All ants, M'Cook thinks, have ceme- 

 teries for their dead ; but he records a very curious observation 

 made by Mrs. Treat on Formica Sangulnea, Latr., a red, slave-making 

 ant. The cemetery for the mistresses is near the gates of the 

 nests, but the black slaves are buried singly, at a considerable 

 distance ! As regards the strength and speed of these ants, M'Cook 

 calculates that one instance he observed Avas equivalent to a man 

 carrying a weight of 2500 pounds a distance of 176 miles in eleven 

 hours. Although Pogonomyrmex Barha'us will occasionally make 

 war on a rival nest, it is usually of a peaceable disposition, and 

 will sometimes even permit a small black ant {Doryimjrmex Insana, 

 Buckley) to establish nests within its own territory. But, accord- 

 ing to Lincecum, as quoted by M'Cook, if the small ants multiply 

 so much as to make themselves inconvenient to the larger ones, the 

 latter get rid of them by a systematic persecution, heaping worm- 

 casts over the black ants' nests in greater quantities than these can 

 clear away, until they force them to shift their abodes in despair. 



One more genus of ants must be noticed before we quit the 

 subject : the Cutting or Parasol Ants {CEcodoma, Latr.) of tropical 

 America. These are small reddish ants about half an inch in 

 length (the small workers being much less), and the wings of the 

 female expand more than two inches. There are two kinds of 

 large workers among the Satiba ants observed by Mr. Bates on 

 the Amazons. Both have immense heads, but one kind has a 

 highly polished head, and accompanies the small workers, as if to 

 superintend their labours, in which, however, the larger ones take 

 no part. But if the nest is probed with a stick, another kind of 

 large worker, with a hairy head, and a large double ocellus in the 

 middle of the forehead, will make its way to the surface. 



These ants are chiefly remarkable for their enormous subter- 

 ranean galleries and for their leaf-collecting habits. Mr. Bates 

 records an instance of the galleries belonging to a single nest at 

 Para extending seventy yards ; and another of their piercing and 

 draining a reservoir. He also mentions that the Rev. H. Clark 

 states that at Rio de Janeiro they have excavated a tunnel under 

 a river as broad as the Thames at London Bridge. They gather 



