Method of Eradicating Ants 61 
very large one, the low mound of earth covering it being 
about four yards in diameter. At first I tried to stop the 
holes up, but fresh ones were immediately opened out: I 
then dug down below the mound, and laid bare the chambers 
beneath, filled with ant-food and young ants in every stage 
of growth; but I soon found that the underground ramifica- 
tions extended so far, and to so great a depth, while the ants 
were continually at work making fresh excavations, that it 
would be an immense task to eradicate them by such means ; 
and notwithstanding all the digging I had done the first day, 
I found them the next as busily at work as ever at my garden, 
which they were rapidly defoliating. At this stage, our 
medical officer, Dr. J. H. Simpson, came to my assistance, 
and suggested pouring carbolic acid, mixed with water, down 
their burrows. The suggestion proved a most valuable one. 
We had a quantity of common brown carbolic acid, about a 
pint of which I mixed with four buckets of water, and, after 
stirring it well about, poured it down the burrows; I could 
hear it rumbling down to the lowest depths of the formi- 
carium four or five feet from the surface. The effect was 
all that I could have wished: the marauding parties were 
at once drawn off from my garden to meet the new danger 
at home. The whole formicarium was disorganised. Big 
fellows came stalking up from the cavernous regions below, 
only to descend again in the utmost perplexity. 
Next day I found them busily employed bringing up the 
ant-food from the old burrows, and carrying it to a new one 
a few yards distant; and here I first noticed a wonderful 
instance of their reasoning powers. Between the old burrows 
and the new one was a steep slope. Instead of descending 
this with their burdens, they cast them down on the top of 
the slope, whence they rolled down to the bottom, where 
another relay of labourers picked them up and carried them 
to the new burrow. It was amusing to watch the ants 
hurrying out with bundles of food, dropping them over the 
slope, and rushing back immediately for more. They also 
brought out great numbers of dead ants that the fumes of 
1 This gentleman, beloved by all who knew hin, of rare talent, and 
with every prospect of a prosperous career before him, died at Jamaica 
from hydrophobia, between two and three months after being bitten 
by a small dog that had not itself shown any symptoms of that disease. 
