54 CRUSOE'S ISLAND. 



The very species that I had the good fortune to 

 find crossing my path, that morning in the forest, is 

 described by Mr. Alfred Wallace, who found it in the 

 Amazons region of Brazil. It seems to prefer a dis- 

 trict where red earth is abundant, and there it builds 

 great mounds, sometimes twenty feet across and three 

 or four feet in height. "These hillocks," says the 

 famous naturalist just mentioned, " are riddled with 

 holes in every direction, and into them the ants may 

 be seen dragging little circular pieces of leaf, which 

 they cut off from particular trees preferred by them. 

 Orange trees and leguminous shrubs suffer most from 

 their ravages, and these they sometimes entirely strip 

 of their foliage in a night or two. Young plants, too, 

 suffer very much, and can not be grown in some 

 places on account of them. They remain in one lo- 

 cality for a long time ; for, on my observing to a gen- 

 tleman at a cattle estate near Para how remarkably 

 the track of these ants was worn across the pathway 

 and through the grass, he informed me that he had 

 observed them marching along that very track for 

 fifteen or twenty years." 



This, then, was the explanation of the green rib- 

 bon across the trail : It was composed of ants carrying 

 to their nests leaves with which to line their cells. 

 Those that do this work are what is known in the 

 ant world as " neuters " ; they are very strong and 

 have tremendous jaws. It would be next to impossi- 

 ble to depict this band of ants under their leaf shelters 

 with any degree of accuracy. In fact, a picture of 

 that green strip, with no hint of the ants which car- 



