Chap. V. BLIND ANTS. 363 



the summits of all the lower trees, searching every leaf 

 to its apex, and whenever they encounter a mass of de- 

 caying vegetable matter, where booty is plentiful, they 

 concentrate, like other Ecitons, all their forces upon 

 it, the dense phalanx of shining and quickly-moving 

 bodies, as it spreads over the surface, looking like a 

 flood of dark-red liquid. They soon penetrate every 

 part of the confused heap, and then, gathering together 

 again in marching order, onward they move. All soft- 

 bodied and inactive insects fall an easy prey to them, 

 and, like other Ecitons, they tear their victims in pieces 

 for facility of carriage. A phalanx of this species, when 

 passing over a tract of smooth ground, occupies a space 

 of from four to six square yards ; on examining the ants 

 closely they are seen to move, not altogether in one 

 straightforward direction, but in variously-spreading 

 contiguous columns, now separating a little from the 

 general mass, now re-uniting with it. The margins of 

 the phalanx spread out at times like a cloud of skir- 

 mishers from the flanks of an army. I was never able 

 to find the hive of this species. 



Blind Ecitons. — I will now give a short account of 

 the blind species of Eciton. None of the foregoing 

 kinds have eyes of the facetted or compound structure 

 such as are usual in insects, and which ordinary ants 

 (Formica) are furnished with, but all are provided with 

 organs of vision composed each of a single lens. Con- 

 necting them with the utterly blind species of the genus, 

 is a very stout-limbed Eciton, the E. crassicornis, whose 

 eyes are sunk in rather deep sockets. This ant goes 

 on foraging expeditions like the rest of its tribe, and 



