FIELD NATURALISTS' CLUB. 7 



the killing bottle just as he was being thrown into it and went 



winging his way through the sunshine, only to meet with a more 

 ignominious death. Poor foolish beetle ! Instead of adorning a 

 cabinet with his remains and being admired by scores of ento- 

 mologists he allowed himself to be snapped up by a Qu'est-ce 

 qu'il dit* which swooped down from its perch on a lofty bamboo 

 and swallowed him with a single jerk. A curious sight here 

 attracted our attention. We were turning back the leaves of the 

 wayside plants, on the look out for the caterpillars of Micro- 

 lepidoptera, scale insects, the smaller members of the cicada family, 

 or anything else which we might find, when we noted a solitary 

 ant,f running along the stem of the plant. Every now and again 

 she stopped at the joint where the leaves sprouted and felt with 

 her mandibles a little round excrescence growing there. "What 

 is she doing?'' I asked, and my companion, who knows far more 

 about ants, and for matter of that, Natural History in general, 

 than I do, told me that the little excrescences contained a honey 

 sweet liquid which the ant was extracting. Near here my friend 

 found a Queen-ant oiCamponotus artriceps, which, having been fer- 

 tilized, had, after the nuptial flight, retired to a secluded corner, 

 where she was waiting for some workers to come along and find 

 out her condition, when they would at once feed her, and build 

 her a suitable home and so found a new Colony. What a 

 wonderful and absorbingly interesting subject is ant-life. Every 

 day fresh facts are becoming known about it ; ants have been 

 proved to be Builders, Agriculturists, Cattle-herders, Slave- 

 holders, Marauders — in fact there is hardly one of the primitive 

 occupations of human life which is not in some way reproduced 

 in the history of some species of ant. On the under surface of a 

 Pandanus plant we saw an interesting wasp's nest. It consisted 

 of a blown parchment like substance and in size and shape was 

 not unlike a large pear, only the point, (where the fruit's stem 

 would be) hung downwards, and it was there that the entrance 

 was situated. With due precautions against "bites" (as the 

 country Creoles call the sting) we got hold of the nest and rid it 

 of its furious inmates — a feat which requires considerable coolness 

 and dexterity. Being able to examine the nest at our leisure we 

 could appreciate what great artists its builders were. In fact, 

 all the "Jack Spaniards,'' as they are called, although they have 

 no course of academical training are naturally great architects. 

 The variety of form which their nests take must strike the most 

 unobservant. Some species go in extensively for modelling in 

 clay ; others make a special parchment of their own and a third 



*Pitangus sulphuratus. 

 fEctatomma tuberculatum, Latr. 



