134 



Marvels of Insect Life. 



[Harold Bcistin. 



Ants as Spring-cleaners. 



Anglo-Indians tell us how, 

 upon occasion, ants other than 

 those that nest in the walls or 

 under the floors of their bunga- 

 lows, pay a visit from outside, 

 and make a deadly onslaught 

 upon the cockroaches, crickets, 

 and other domestic pests. But 

 it is in tropical America that this 

 kind of thing is done at times on 

 a grand scale. Madam Merian, 

 who visited Surinam at the very 

 end of the seventeenth century, 

 tells us of a large species of ant 

 that " when they issue from their 

 excavations, which thev do twice 

 in the year, their numbers are so 

 great that thcv hll the houses. 



Photo by] 



A Foraging Ant. 



There is no certainty as to the exact species of ant referred to in the account 



of the Trinidad spring-cleaning, but in the opinion of " Amazon " Bates it and rUn frOm One apartment tO 



was an eciton or foraging ant, such as is represented in this photograph in -^ 



the winged condition, twice the actual size. another, killing all thc Smaller 



animals and sucking their juices. . . . Even man himself is obliged to take 

 flight, such multitudes traverse the houses in all directions. When one house 

 has been in this way stripped and cleared, they pass on to the next, till at 

 length they return to their holes." 



There is no definite indication of species in this reference, and many 

 authorities have been disposed to cast doubt upon Madam's veracity, 

 owing to the fact that subsequent observers have failed to substantiate 

 her statement that the lantern-fly is a luminous Insect. But Lacordaire, 

 though he denies that these ants of visitation, as Madam Merian called 

 them, behave in this way as a habit, but only when there is scarcity 

 of food out of doors, states that he witnessed such a visitation in 

 Cayenne. Bates is of opinion that the ant referred to was one of the wandering 

 or foraging ants,i but he says that during his long stay on the Amazons he heard 

 of no instance of their entering houses. On the other hand, a Mrs. Carmichael 

 has left a vivid and detailed account of the manner in which an armv of these ants 

 — which she calls " chasseurs " — effected a most salutary " spring-cleaning " of 

 her house, Laurel Hill, in Trinidad, and by great good fortune Messrs. Kirby and 

 Spence have handed that account on to future generations by quoting it in their 

 classical " Introduction to Entomology." There are certain points in it, such as 

 the reference to the presence of the blackbirds — " never seen but at such times " 

 — which agrees so closely with Bates' account of the ant-thrushes, that they give 

 it the stamp of authenticity. It is a long account, but is really well worth repro- 

 duction in full, for Kirby and Spence are only read by the elect in these days. 



' ]'"citon haniatuiT, or E. (Irej)anophora. 



