176 The Naturalist in Nicaragua 
with them, as I often found to my cost, when trying to clear 
my pines, by being stung severely by them. Not content 
with watching over their cattle, the ants brought up grains 
of damp earth, and built domed galleries over them, in which, 
under the vigilant guard of their savage little attendants, the 
scale-insects must, I think, have been secure from the attacks 
of all enemies. 
Many of the leaf-hoppers—species, I think, of Membracis 
—were attended by ants. These leaf-hoppers live in little 
clusters on shoots of plants and beneath leaves, in which are 
hoppers in every stage of development—eggs, larve, and 
adults. I believe it is only the soft-bodied larve that exude 
honey. It would take a volume to describe the various 
species, and I shall confine my remarks to one whose habits 
I was able to observe with some minuteness. The papaw 
trees growing in my garden were infested by a small brown 
species of Membracis—one of the leaf-hoppers—that laid its 
eggs in a cottony-like nest by the side of the ribs on the under 
part of the leaves. The hopper would stand covering the 
nest until the young were hatched. These were little soft- 
bodied dark-coloured insects, looking like aphides, but more 
robust, and with the hind segments turned up. From the 
end of these the little Jarvee exuded drops of honey, and were 
assiduously attended by small ants belonging to two species 
of the genus Phezdole, one of them being the same as I have 
already described as attending the glands on the passion- 
flower. One tree would be attended by one species, another 
by the other; and I never saw the two species on the same 
tree. A third ant, however—a species of Hypoclinea—which 
I have mentioned before as a cowardly species, whose nests 
were despoiled by the Ecztons, frequented all the trees, and 
whenever it found any young hoppers unattended, it would 
relieve them of their honey, but would scamper away on the 
approach of any of the Pheidole. The latter do not sting, 
but they attack and bite the hand if the young hoppers are 
interfered with. These leaf-hoppers are, when young, so 
soft-bodied and sluggish in their movements, and there are 
sO many enemies ready to prey upon them, that I imagine 
that in the tropics many species would be exterminated if it 
~were not for the protection of the ants. 
Similarly as, on the savannahs, I had observed a wasp 
