Cuap. XII. ANTS: AT PLAY. 361 
smitten with a sudden fit of laziness. Some were walking slowly about, 
others were brushing their antennz with their fore feet ; but the drollest 
sight was their cleaning one another. Here and there an ant was seen 
stretching forth first one leg and then another, to be brushed or 
washed by one or more of its comrades, who performed the task by 
passing the limb between the jaws and the tongue, finishing by giving 
the antenne a friendly wipe. It was a curious spectacle, and one well 
calculated to increase one’s amazement at the similarity between the 
instinctive actions of ants and the acts of rational beings, a similarity 
which must have been brought about by two different processes of 
development of the primary qualities of mind. The actions of these 
ants looked like simple indulgence in idle amusement. Have these 
little creatures, then, an excess of energy beyond what is required for 
labours absolutely necessary to the welfare of their species, and do they 
thus expend it in mere sportiveness, like young lambs or kittens, or in 
idle whims like rational beings? It is probable that these hours of 
relaxation and cleaning may be indispensable to the effective perform- 
ance of their harder labours ; but whilst looking at them, the conclusion 
that the ants were engaged merely in play was irresistible. 
Lciton predator.—Vhis is a small dark-reddish species, very similar 
to the common red stinging ant of England. It differs from all other 
Ecitons in its habit of hunting, not in columns, but in dense phalanxes 
consisting of myriads of individuals, and was first met with at Ega, 
where if is very common. Nothing in insect movements is more 
striking than the rapid march of these large and compact bodies. 
Wherever they pass, all the rest of the animal world is thrown into a 
state of alarm. ‘They stream along the ground and climb to the sum- 
mits of all the lower trees, searching every leaf to its apex, and whenever 
they encounter a mass of decaying vegetable matter, where booty is 
plentiful, they concentrate, like other Ecitons, all their forces upon it, 
the dense phalanx of shining and quickly-moving bodies, as it spreads 
over the surface, looking like a flood of dark-red liquid. They soon 
penetrate every part of the confused heap, and then, gathering to- 
gether again in marching order, onward they move. All soft-bodied 
and inactive insects fall an easy prey to them, and, like other Ecitons, 
they tear their victims in pieces for facility of carriage. A phalanx of 
this species, when passing over a tract of smooth ground, occupies a 
space of from four to six square yards; on examining the ants closely 
they are seen to move, not altogether in one straightforward direction, 
but in variously spreading contiguous columns, now separating a little 
from the general mass, now re-uniting with it. The margins of the 
phalanx spread out at times like a cloud of skirmishers from the flanks 
of an army. I was never able to find the hive of this species. 
Biind Ecitons.—I will now give a short account of the blind species 
of Eciton. None of the foregoing kinds have eyes of the faceted or 
compound structure such as are usual in insects, and which ordinary 
ants (Formica) are furnished with, but all are provided with organs of 
vision composed each of a single lens. Connecting them with the 
utterly blind species of the genus, is a very stout-limbed Eciton, the E. 
crassicornis, whose eyes are sunk in rather deep sockets. ‘This ant goes 
