INSECT ODDITIES. 253 



enter mainly into the composition of the " bush " or " scrub," appear to be 

 suffering from a plague of caterpillars. Not that the leaves of the trees are 

 themselves devoured, but they are all spun together with webbing, after the 

 manner practised by many Lepidopterous larvre, and in bunches which vary in calibre 

 and dimensions from two or three leaves only to masses five or six inches or 

 more in diameter. Pushing one's way through the plantations infested by these ants, 

 one soon becomes unpleasantly conscious of their presence. They fall down 

 in showers from their shaken nests and are prone to fix themselves with their 

 sharp, powerful jaws to whatever exposed area of epidermis may present itself. 

 Fortunately, they do not, like many of their congeners, sting as well as bite, though, 

 all the same, two or three that have, after the manner of their kind, insinuated them- 

 selves beneath your shirt collar, or probably further extended their peregrinations 

 before selecting an anchorage, can evolve from their human victim a highly 

 creditable display of gymnastic capacities, together with a by no means unusual 

 accompaniment of fluent rhetoric. In aspect the Green Ant is undoubtedly one of 

 the most elegant of its tribe. The green pellucidity of its body rivals that of the 

 beryl, while the colour and texture of its limbs may be most aptly compared to 

 amber. Beauty, in the case of the Green Ant, is more than skin-deep. Their 

 attractive, almost sweetmeat-like translucency possibly invited the first essays at their 

 consumption by the human species. Mashed up in water, after the manner of lemon 

 squash, these ants form a pleasant acid drink which is held in high favour by the 

 natives of North Queensland, and is even appreciated by many European palates. 



That these Green Ants should be capable of spinning silk seemed such an 

 anomaly that the elucidation of their modus operandi attracted the writer's attention 

 on more than one of the occasions of his visits to the north. It was, finally, when 

 examining the nests of these ants and their ways in the bush a little way out of 

 Cooktown in July, 1890, that the enigma was solved. It was then found that the 

 ants in their matured state took no distinct part in the weaving, though they were 

 at the same time instrumental in requisitioning their immature grubs or larvse to 

 fulfil this task. 



The way in which these helpless weaklings were impressed for active service 

 and trained to labour for the public weal may be more clearly understood by a 

 reference to Figs. 1 and 2 in Chromo-Plate IX. Fig. 1 in this Plate portrays a 

 relatively small nest of this ant species so far composed of but a few leaves, 

 which, as sketched, were in process of being united together by a silken tissue. To 



