MY LIFE 



rtible m. ( )doriferous glands, especially if imbedded 

 in the leaf, act as a protection against leaf-cutting ants, and 

 it-: some extent) also against caterpillars. I can remember 



no instance of seeing insects attracted to a plant, to aid in its 

 fertilization, or for any oilier purpose, by their presence. The 

 glands on which some insects t\ed arc (so far as I know) 



always exposed, either in the shape of cups on the petioles, 



involucres &c, or of bairs with dilated and hollow bases, 

 and of sessile or stalked cysts, on the leaves, petioles, pedicels 

 &C. : and the secretion is either tasteless or slightly sweet, 

 but inodorous — to our senses at least. 



" Trees with aromatic leaves abound in the plains of 

 equatorial America. Those which have the aromatic (and 

 often resinous) secretion imbedded in distinct cysts include 

 all Myrtacea, Myrsineae, Sanydeas, and many Euphorbiaceae 

 Compositae etc. The leaves of very few of these are, when 

 growing, ever touched by leaf-cutting ants. In the few cases, 

 however, where the secretion is slightly but pleasantly bitter, 

 and wholesome, as in the Orange, the leaves are quite to their 

 taste. At a farm house on the Trombetas * I was shown 

 orange-trees which had been entirely denuded in a single 

 night by Sauba ants. Various expedients are resorted to by 

 the inhabitants of Sauba-infested lands to protect their fruit- 

 trees, such as a small moat, kept constantly filled with water, 

 around each tree ; or wrapping the base of the trunk with 

 cotton kept soaked with andiroba oil, etc. 



[" Note. — Leaf-cutters in the vicinity of man work chiefly 

 by night, taught doubtless by painful experience of his vicious 

 propensity to interfere with their operations. But in the 

 depths of the forest I have often caught them at work, some 

 up a tree cutting off leaves and even slender young branches, 

 others on the ground sawing them up and carrying them off. 

 When at San Carlos, 2 I one day went into the forest to 

 gather a Securidaca (woody Polygaleous twiner) I had seen 

 coming into flower a few weeks before. I found it in full 

 flower, but the little tree on which it grew — a Phyllanthus, 



1 A northern tributary of the Amazon above Santarem. 



2 The first village in Venezuela on the Upper Rio Negro. — A. R. W. 



