INSECTS. 





structed out of grains of earth. Among the termites on a preceding page 

 we met similar covered ways, but there the particles were cemented 

 together. Here they are constructed, in the most surprising manner, of 

 earth without a particle of cement. 



These foraging ants are not always bent on plunder. At times Mr. 

 Bates saw them when they appeared as if smitten with sudden laziness, and 

 like ants of our own climes, they engaged in cleaning themselves and their 

 fellows, brushing the antennae with the fore feet, and cleaning the legs 

 with the jaws and tongue. "Here and there an ant was seen stretching 

 forth first one leg and then another to be brushed and washed by one or 

 more of its comrades, who performed the task by passing the limb between 

 the jaws and tongue, finishing by giving the antennae a friendly wipe." 

 Dr. McCook has observed similar toilet habits among the ants of 

 Pennsylvania. 



The roads which some species of ants construct are marvels of engi- 

 neering. Some of them are above ground, while others partake of the 

 nature of tunnels which are continued for prodigious distances. The Rev. 

 Hamlet Clark tells us that a planter in Brazil had great difficulty in pro- 

 tecting his trees from the ravages of one species. " Sometimes in a single 

 night it will strip an orange or lemon tree of all its leaves ; a ditch of 

 water around his garden, which quite keeps out all other ants, is of no use. 

 This species carries a mine under its bed without any difficulty. Indeed, I 

 have been assured again and again by sensible men that it has undermined, 

 in its progress through the country, the great river Paraiba. At any rate, 

 without anything like a natural or an artificial bridge, it appears on the 

 other side and continues its course." This is, as Mr. Lubbock remarks, 

 not absolute proof that this species actually tunnels under the river, but 

 the view gains plausibility from the observations of Mr. Lincecum on an 

 allied species occurring in Texas. His account, as presented in abstract 

 bv Mr. Norton, runs as follows : — 



" He states that they often carry their subterranean roads for several 

 hundred yards in grassy districts where the grass would prove an impedi- 

 ment to their progress. On one occasion, to secure access to a gentleman s 

 garden, where they were cutting the vegetables to pieces, they tunnelled 

 beneath a creek, which was at that place fifteen or twenty feet deep, and 

 from bank to bank about thirty feet." 



Of the surface roads, those made by the agricultural ant" of Texas are 

 among the most remarkable. They are constructed by carefully clearing 

 away all grass and other obstacles, which is a labor of considerable: 

 in the semi-tropical climate and rank vegetation of Texas. The 1< 

 road measured by Dr. McCook could be traced distinctly for sixty feet; 



