58 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



round tunnels, varying from half an inch to seven or eight 

 inches in diameter, lead down through the mounds of earth ; 

 and many more, from some distance around, also lead under- 

 neath them. At some of the holes on the mounds ants will 

 be seen busily at work, bringing up little pellets of earth from 

 below and casting them down on the ever-increasing mounds, 

 so that its surface is nearly always fresh and new-looking. 

 Standing near the mounds one sees from every point of the 

 compass out-paths leading to them, all thronged with the busy 

 workers carrying their leafy burdens. As far as the eye can 

 distinguish their tiny forms troops upon troops of leaves are 

 moving up towards the central point, and disappearing down 

 the numerous tunnelled passages. The out-going, empty- 

 handed hosts are partly concealed amongst the bulky burdens 

 of the in-comers, and can only be distinguished by looking 

 closely amongst them. The ceaseless, toiling hosts impress 

 one with their power, and one asks — What forests can stand 

 before such invaders ? how is it that vegetation is not eaten 

 off the face of the earth ? Surely nowhere but in the tropics, 

 where the recuperative powers of Nature are immense and 

 ever-active, could such devastation be withstood." — P. 71. 



Making Ants Mad. — "Don Francisco Velasquez informed 

 me, in 1870, that he had a powder which made the ants mad, 

 so that they bit and destroyed each other. He gave me a 

 little of it, and it proved to be corrosive sublimate. I made 

 several trials of it, and found it most efBcacious in turning a 

 large column of the ants; a little of it sprinkled across one of 

 their paths in dry weather has a most surprising effect : as 

 soon as one of the ants touches the white powder it com- 

 mences to run about wildly, and to attack any other ant it 

 comes across. In a couple of hours round balls of the ants 

 will be found all biting each other, and numerous individuals 

 will be seen bitten completely in two, whilst others have lost 

 some of their legs or antennae. News of the commotion is 

 carried to the formicariura, and huge fellows, measuring 

 three-quarters of an inch in length, that only come out of the 

 nest during a migration or an attack on the nest or one of the 

 working columns, are seen stalking down with a determined 

 air, as if they would soon right matters. As soon, however, 

 as they have touched the sublimate all their stateliness leaves 

 them : they rush about, their legs are seized hold of by some 



