116 OUT OF DOORS. 



This insect, which may be known by its large size 

 and reddish thorax, is one of the stingless ants, though 

 it is quite as formidable an antagonist as those species 

 which possess those sharp and envenomed darts. For 

 though the wood-ant has no sting, it yet has a store of 

 poison, and can use its venomous powers effectively, 

 though in a more roundabout manner than is adopted 

 by the sting-bearers. 



It is a most fierce and determined creature, the 

 sense of fear seeming to have been wholly omitted from 

 its composition. It will attack anything and anybody 

 without the least hesitation, and possesses all the courage 

 without the cunning exhibited by the Lilliputians in 

 their memorable attack on the Man Mountain. For a 

 man is to the wood-ant not only a moving mountain, 

 but a moving world ; and yet there is not a single ant 

 that will not attack a man, if it fancies him to be in too 

 close proximity to its residence. 



Urged by some wonderful instinct, it makes at once 

 for the nearest unprotected skin, bites fiercely with its 

 sharp and calliper-shaped jaws, and simultaneously bind- 

 ing its body so as to bring the tip of the abdomen to 

 bear upon the wound, squirts a small drop of its poison 

 into the cavity, producing for the time a sharp and 

 painful smarting sensation. The pain, however, is very 

 transient, although, at the moment it is inflicted, the 

 pang is quite as severe as that inflicted by the sting of 

 a wasp. Nor is this its only mode of attack. The wood- 

 ant is able to eject this poisonous substance to some dis- 



