GEOLOGIC WORK OF ANTS—BRANNER. 311 
ANTS AS FOOD. 
In the Amazon region some of the ants are even used by the Indians 
for food. 
The head and thorax are the parts eaten, the abdomen being nipped off (at San 
Carlos I constantly see them eaten entire), and it is eaten uncooked. The taste to me 
is strong, fiery, and disagreeable, but those who have eaten the bach4co iried in turtle 
oil tell me it is quite palatable. 
Orton ? says the satbas ‘‘are eaten by the Rio Negro Indians, and 
esteemed a luxury, while the Tapajos Tribes use them to season their 
mandioca sauce.” 
In the more thickly settled parts of Brazil the custom of eating these 
ants is either not practiced nowadays, or, if it is, it is not generally 
known. Inthe early history of the country, however, when the native 
Indians were much more abundant than they are now, the custom 
appears to have been common. 
STRUCTURES ABOVE GROUND. 
Origin of the structures.—The word ‘‘nests” frequently applied to 
the superficial structures of ants should not be understood to mean 
nests in the ordinary signification of the word. These structures 
sometimes contain the queens, eggs, and larve, but at other times 
these are kept in excavations below the surface. 
The mounds made by the true ants all begin as small funnel-shaped 
ridges around the excavations started by individual females. The 
large mounds are the results of the work of many generations and of a 
vast number of individuals. : 
Without going into any detailed description of the habits of the 
ants, it is worth while to give, for those unfamiliar with their habits, a 
general idea of the methods followed by these ants in establishing new 
colonies and in increasing them. When the swarming or mating sea- 
son of the sauba ant comes, the young females leave their homes and 
fly away. They seem to fly about very much at random—at least, I 
have rarely seen them going in any particular direction—and when 
they have been seen going together it was apparently due to the direc- 
tion of the wind or the position of the sun at the time, rather than to 
any definite purpose on their part. 
When the female alights after a flight of only a few minutes, she 
breaks off her wings and at once falls to work at excavating a burrow. 
All kinds of places are selected for these burrows. Jt does not appear 
that the selection is deliberate, but it seems to be determined by the 
accident of alighting from an aimiess flight. Judging from the large 
number of individual females I have frequently seen in the air and on 
1 Richard Spruce: Notes of a botanist on the Amazon and Andes, vol. 1, p. 484. London, 19908. 
2 James Orton: The Andes and the Amazon, 3d ed., p.301. New York, 1876. 
