182 JOURNAL OP THE TRINIDAD 



These armies are of great service to the community, making its 

 existence pretty safe. Those ferocious hunting ants Eciton 

 jforeli, Mayr, which are so common in the forests and render 

 the Trinidad Agriculturist such good services by destroying 

 much vermin on the Cocoa estates, are powerless against Attn, 

 whose nests they seem to take no notice of, although they 

 do not spare some othsr species of ants such as Camp • i itus and 

 Dolichoderus. Even if they invade the nests, they are soon 

 repulsed (as my friend Mr. Albert Carr has seen in the woods). 

 The Superintendent of the Botanic Gardens in a recent Bulletin 

 calls attention to Amphisbcence an I Typhlops as natural enemies 

 to parasol ants, and recommends preserving them. But these 

 reptiles do not seem to do the ants any harm at all. As 

 a rule Amphisbcence are not found in every nest dug up, tiny 

 only turn up now and then and man}- of them are very badly 

 bitten and show numerous marks of the soldiers' mandibles. 

 It seems pretty certain that their occurrence in the nests is 

 accidental and this also applies to the smaller Typhlops, which 

 are also found there. Neither Typhlops (nor his congener 

 Glauconia) would be much use if he encountered a Parasol 

 Amazon, for the formidable jaws would speedily shear him 

 clean in two. What seems to attract these two reptiles is 

 the number of worms in the loose soil brought up by the 

 ants which contains much vegetable matter rejected from the 

 mushroom garden and which is always infested by worms and 

 insects. This of course only applies to very huge nests, and 

 the country people all say that " Two-headed snakes " as the 

 Amphisbcence are called, are only found in very large ne^ts. 

 The only way to deal with these ants is to poison them. Many 

 substances have been suggested, such as Cyanide of Potassium, 

 Bisulphide of Carbon. Coal-tar, but none of these have proved 

 very successful. The method in general use all over the Island 

 is that known as puddling, but it is very expensive, especially in 

 districts where there is a want of water. Mr. Ewen patented 

 a process a few years ago, the principle of which is driving into 

 the nest a poisonous fume which acts instantaneously on all the 

 ants and larvae, with which it comes into contact. This 

 process was very successful at some experimental trials, but does 

 not seem to have been universally adopted, and agriculturists 

 are still trying to find out something which would rid them of 

 their chief enemy in a cheap and efiectual manner. With regard 

 to A. octospinosa in gardens, it is easy to dispose of nests 

 built in the ground with cyanide, coal-tar or very little puddling, 

 but when they are in masonry as is often the case, or in the 

 roots of trees, the task of disposing of them is difficult, and 

 some poisonous gas must be driven in with a suitable apparatus, 



6th October, 1S94, 



