318 Mr. C. F. M. Swynnerton's Experiments 



other ants near, drag it (if they can) into one of the columns. 

 It is these stragglers that, in my particular experience, are 

 the more frequent mark of the fly, the habits of which have 

 been described by Mr. W. A. Lamborn (Proc. Ent. See, 

 1913, cxxiii-cxxviii). 



Following the column, as it winds through the forest 

 or over the grass-country, we may at last come to a place 

 where the ants are scattered in hundreds of thousands 

 everywhere, and are definitely searching — all over the 

 ground, up the grass-stems, and up, sometimes for some 

 distance, even the stems of trees. It is under these circum- 

 stances that I have on a few occasions, with insects abund- 

 ant, been so fortunate as to witness the scene that Thomas 

 Belt described so graphically, in connection ^^ith Eciton 

 'predator, in his fascinating "Naturalist in Nicaragua" — 

 the seizure of the fleeing insects, the eventual overpowering 

 of even grasshoppers, the clustering of the prey on the 

 tops of the herbs and grasses, and its drop into the thick 

 of the ants below when approached by those that climbed 

 after it, and the escape by suspension of spiders and larvae. 

 I have also on a few occasions watched birds attending 

 Dorylus, as Belt says they attend Eciton, to rob stragglers 

 of their prey, and for the sake of the flying and hopping 

 insects flushed by the ants. Some of the birds on occasion 

 eat the ants themselves. In my experiments on many 

 species of insectivorous birds I found that some ate ants 

 generally, including Dorylus, far more readily than others. 

 Of these others some showed a strong repugnance to them, 

 and it is doubtless in relation to this latter class of enemy 

 that ant-mimicry finds its main use. Yet even the birds 

 that prey on ants show caution in attacking Dorylus in 

 column, merely (in my observations) dropping down to 

 stragglers and hastily returning to their perch. 



Ants of other species become very uneasy when drivers 

 are near, and the carrying out of the contents of their 

 nurseries by those that inhabit my verandah posts has 

 often been a warning of the necessity for putting on pots 

 upon pots of water to boil. Not that it is with anything 

 but reluctance that one pours boihng water on these 

 animals, so useful when they confine themselves to the 

 Kaffirs' quarters, the kitchen, and the kitchen garden. 

 But it is unpleasant to have to turn out at a moment's 

 notice, at night, oneself; and. in my case, numerous live 

 birds in cages in the verandah had to be protected from 



