234 HABITS AND INSTINCTS OP ANIMALS. CHAP. VII. 



efforts, made their entry through the keyholes ; after 

 which, the only way to clear the garrison is, to expose 

 it to a hot sun, which the invaders cannot bear, and all 

 march off 1 in a few minutes." There is a species of 

 ant In Guiana, called the fire ant, of small size, but 

 capable of inflicting excessive pain. Whole armies of 

 these attacked captain Stedman and his party during 

 the day. " These insects," he says, ' ' are black, and very 

 diminutive j but live in such amazing multitudes to- 

 gether, that their hillocks have sometimes obstructed 

 our passage by their size, over which if one chances to 

 pass, the feet and legs are instantly covered with in- 

 numerable hosts of these creatures, which seize the skin 

 with such violence, in their pincers, that they will sooner 

 suffer the head to be parted from the body, than let go 

 their hold. The burning pain which they occasion, 

 cannot, in my opinion, proceed from the sharpness of 

 the pincers only, but must be owing to some venomous 

 fluid which they infuse, or which the wound imbibes 

 from them. I can aver that I have seen them make a 

 whole company hop about as if they had been scalded 

 with boiling water." * 



(246.) Another species, noticed by the same writer, 

 is no less remarkable for its extraordinary size, being 

 an inch in length, and perfectly black. These insects 

 pillage a tree of all its leaves in a short time, which 

 they cut in small pieces, the size of a sixpence, and 

 carry under ground. It was indeed entertaining to see 

 a whole army of these creatures crawling perpetually 

 the same way, each with his green leaf in a perpendicular 

 direction. Some of the natives seem to have an idea 

 that this was to feed a blind serpent under ground ; 

 but the truth is, it serves for nourishment to their 

 young brood, who cannot help themselves, and are' 

 sometimes lodged to the depth of eight feet in the earth. 

 Their bite, however, is not near so painful as that of 

 the fire ant just mentioned. In Ceylon is an insect, 

 probably a species of ant, found in dwelling houses, 



* Voyage to Surinam, vol. ii. p. 94. 



