2 Rev. Thomas S. Savage on the 



Great confusion exists, it would seem, in the accounts of travel- 

 lers respecting the ants generally of this country, often being 

 characterized as a whole by traits that belong to particular genera 

 or species only ; one author copying from another, and none 

 making more than casual observations, unless it be Smeathman, 

 whose attention was given chiefly to the habits of the Termes fatale, 

 or white ants proper. 



My present notes have respect to one species only of the family 

 of Formicidce. In a subsequent communication I propose to 

 speak of the Termes fatale, but so far only as I may discover 

 new facts and detect inaccuracies in the accounts already pub- 

 lished. 



The insect in question is known here under the significant name 

 of " Driver," I am not aware that it has ever been described or 

 that it exists in any of the European Cabinets. It would, however, 

 be strange if an insect of almost equal prominence with xheTermes 

 fatale, and acting a far more important practical part in the 

 economy of nature, should be found, at this day, without " a 

 local habitation and a name" in some of your Systems of Classi- 

 fication. 



From the careless and casual manner in which the " ants of 

 Africa" have been spoken of by some authors, I am inclined to 

 think that it has been noticed under the name of " Termes viarum ;" 

 not by Smeathman, for his account of that insect indicates radical 

 differences between it and mine, though they possess some traits 

 in common. 



Mr. Robert Clark, surgeon to the colony of Sierra Leone, in a 

 work recently published, enumerating " the ants" of that region, 

 gives by name the five species of Smeathman's Termes, and in 

 the same connection remarks, that " the travelling ants, or Formicce 

 viarum, will occasionally march into houses, where they devour 

 everything eatable they can find." I am at a loss to know what 

 ant he could have in his mind other than the " Driver" of this 

 region; but if, by "everything eatable," he refers to the food of 

 man, he is mistaken, for there are many things edible to us that 

 they will not touch ; and if by it he means " everything eatable" 

 to the insect itself, he gives us no information of its habits in this 

 respect, for he states neither what it will eat nor what it will not. 



Again, in close connection he says, " I have often been assailed 

 in some tracts by a highly fetid odour emanating from the cops- 

 wood skirting the road side ; the odour not unlike the stench pro- 

 ceeding from the carcass of a dead horse, being concentrated, as 

 it were, in one place. The natives invariably speak of the stench 



