^ Fauna : Invertebrates 



mitigation of hostility, because after the driver ants have 

 passed through a dwelling or a camp they have for the time 

 being cleared it of rats, mice, cockroaches, crickets, bugs, and 

 other noisome pests ; but at the same time they devour any 

 unfortunate chickens or the smaller domestic birds and beasts 

 that may be confined and unable to escape from their attacks. 

 Even a human being, if he or she were held prisoner, 

 would be devoured by these ants. In fact, it has been 

 a common outlet for African cruelty to peg down men, 

 women, or children across the path of the drivers to die a 

 horrible and lingering death. In several parts of Africa I have 

 seen the corpses of Negroes who have been killed in battle or 

 have died of disease half eaten by these ants. 



Buttikofer is inclined to suggest that the remarkable scarcity 

 of the varied types of insects and the smaller beasts and birds 

 in Liberia may be due to the excessive numbers of these 

 predatory ants, both of the driver genus {dnomma) and of the 

 red tree-ants (formica sp. ?). It is quite conceivable that in 

 time this development of the most hateful class of living beings 

 insects might depopulate a continent, as no intelligence below 

 that of the human could cope with and destroy them. The red 

 tree-ants above referred to are not so numerous as the drivers, 

 and perhaps not quite so aggressive, in that they do not go 

 far from the trees in which they dwell to attack the passer- 

 by. But their bite is very much dreaded by the naked native, 

 especially if he be sent up trees to search for orchids or birds' 

 nests. The tree-ants make small nests in large leaves, which 

 are rolled over into a cornucopia receptacle. If ever in gazing 

 up at a tree you notice the grey under-side of a leaf to be 

 convex, you will know almost to a certainty that it is full of 

 reddish yellow ants with long, nimble legs and attenuated waists, 

 ready to fall on you and nip you with their sharp mandibles, 



85? 



