52 THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



this, that the one is tolerable and the other intolerable. If 

 one must go more into detail, the brown ant is thickset, 

 heavy, slow and phlegmatic. It will eat, more or less, every- 

 thing in the house except, perhap - kerosine oil. It will gnaw 

 a cold leg of mutton, carry excavations into the heart of a 

 loaf of bread, dig a tunnel through the cork of an olive-oil 

 bottle, for the sake of getting drowned in the oil, and orga- 

 nize a regular establishment for the work of carrying off the 

 seed in the canary's cage. And, once in a thing, it cannot be 

 got out. Add to this that it smells unsavoury and tastes 

 nasty, and you have the brown ant. The black ant is 

 slender, nimble, and sprightly. Its chief business in the 

 house is to remove dead cockroaches, crickets, &c., and 

 where I am there is generally a plethora of dead cock- 

 roaches, crickets, &c. All day foragers scour the house 

 in search of these. They do tamper with the sugar some- 

 times, and, in fact, show a leaning towards sweets in 

 general; but they do not spoil what they cannot eat. 

 They do not stick, as a rule, in the jelly, nor drown them- 

 selves in the ginger syrup. Lastly, there is a feud between 

 them and the brown ants, and the two will scarcely live 

 in the same house. Clearly, then, it is sound policy to 

 make an ally of the black and discourage the brown. 



