INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 209 



than itself. These ants, called in Tobago parasol ants 

 ( Formica cephalotes, L.), cut circular pieces out of the 

 leaves of various trees and plants, vvhicli they carry in 

 their jaws to their nests, and they will strip a tree of 

 its leaves in a night, a circumstance which has been 

 confirmed to me by Captain Hancock^. Stedman men- 

 tions another very large ant, being at least an inch in 

 length, which has the same instinct. It was a pleasant 

 spectacle, he observes, to behold this army of ants 

 marching constantly in the same direction, and each 

 individual with its bit of green leaf in its mouth '^. The 

 injury thus caused to trees by insects is not confined 

 to the mere loss of their leaves for one season ; for it 

 occasions them to draw upon the funds of another, by 

 sending forth premature shoots and making gems un- 

 fold, that, in the ordinary course, would not have put 

 forth their foliage till the following year. 



Other insects, though they do not entirely devour 

 the leaves of trees and plants, yet considerably dimi- 

 nish their beauty. Thus, for instance, sometimes the 

 subcutaneous larvse undermine them, when the leaf 

 exhibits the w^hole course of their labyrinth in a pallid, 

 tortuous, gradually dilating line — at others the Tor- 

 trices disfigure them by rolling them up, or the leaf- 

 cutter bees by taking a piece out of them, or certain 

 Tineae again by eating their under surface, and so 



* The same intelligent gentleman related to me, that a person having 

 taken some land at Bahia in the Brazils, he was compelled by these ants, 

 which were so numerous as to render every effort to destroy them ineffec- 

 tual, to relinquish the occupation of it. Their nests were excavated fo 

 the astonishing depth of fourteen feet. Merian Insect. Sur. 18. Smeath- 

 ma.n oa Termiies, Philos. Trans. Ixxi. 39. note 35. 



*■ Stedman, ii. 142. 

 VOL. I. P 



