286 COMPOUND ANT-HILLS. 
I have never seen the Amazons take: 
nourishment but from the mouth of the 
Negroes. I have presented to them 
honey and fruit, which. they left un- 
tasted. When hungry, they approach 
their auxiliaries, and these disgorge in 
their mouths the juices they have obtain- 
ed in their daily intercourse with the 
pucerons. 
An experiment that I tried. upon the 
Legionaries convinced me of their des 
pendance upon their humble compa- 
nions, both for nourishment and_ habi- 
tation. I enclosed thirty of these ants, 
with several pupz and larve of their 
own species, and twenty pup belonging 
to the Negroes, in a glass box, the bot- 
tom of which was covered with a thick 
layer of earth: I placed a little honey in 
very severe pain. Sir Joseph Banks notices a green 
ant, which he saw in New South Wales, that pro- 
duces a pain equal to the sting of a bee; and 
Stedman informs us, that, at Surinam, the Fire 
Ant (so called from the burning sensation it ocea- 
sions) greatly annoyed the soldiers, making them 
leap about, as if scalded with boiling water. — T. 
