400 A YEAR IN BRAZIL. 



were stinging wasps, and their nest was made of grey paper-like 

 material. 



Later in the season (November 5), a colony of very small 

 black bees made a nest of clay in our rancho, the entrance being 

 through a covered way built up the log wall. Dr. Gardner * gives 

 a lists of eighteen honey-bees, with their local names only. They 

 mostly belong to the genus Melipoma, Illig. Mr. Bates \ also 

 refers at some length to bees and wasps. 



Ants. Among the many entomological specimens I collected 

 are some pretty red-yellow-and-black hairy ants. They are Mutilla 

 tristis, Klug. ; M. perspicillaris, Klug. ; M. spinosa, var. ; and 

 another. They are fierce and aggressive, and are exactly imitated 

 by a rhyncophorous beetle of the genus Cyphus (C. Linncei, Sch.). 



I must devote a few more lines to an ant already referred to 

 at some length under the native names of cabegudo and tanajura. 

 The abnormally hard- and large-headed workers carried off my 

 provisions, and destroyed my flannel shirts, so I reciprocated by 

 frying and eating the plump and toothsome females. The workers 

 are the cabec,udo, Atta cephalotes, Linn., A. sexdentata, Latr. ; the 

 large-bodied males and females are A. abdominalis, Smith. The 

 females are twice the size of the males, and over two inches 

 across the wings. The English name is umbrella, or carrying, 

 ant.J Mr. Bates calls them saiiba ant, and devotes ten pages to 

 an account of their habits ; he gives figures of the workers and 

 females. I have repeatedly seen armies of the workers ascend a 

 tree and strip off every leaf; these fall to the ground, and are then 

 cut up into convenient sizes, and carried off by another legion to 

 the nest. I was told that the ants form underground mushroom- 

 beds, and feed their larvae with the fungi that grow on the decay- 

 ing leaves. The ants often struggle along with a piece of leaf a 

 dozen" times larger than themselves clasped in their mandibles, 

 and held erect and so firmly that one can lift the leaf from the 

 ground, and yet they cannot be persuaded to leave hold. It is 

 amusing to observe what appears like a long line of animated 

 leaves crossing a road or moving along some fallen tree-trunk 



* " Travels in Brazil," p. 248. 



f " The Naturalist on the River Amazons," vol. ii. p. 40. 



J " Insects Abroad," p. 441, Rev. J. G. Wood. 



