8 26 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE WAYS AND MEANS OF ANTS. 



BY NORMAN ROBINSON. 



A FEW days since I witnessed an engineering feat on the part 

 of a company of ants that interested me greatly. A Florida 

 chameleon (Anolis principalis) had wandered into my laboratory 

 and taken refuge under a newspaper which was lying in a chair. 

 Some one had evidently occupied the chair without taking up the 

 paper, with the result, of course, of crushing out the life of the 

 unfortunate little anolis. Having occasion to use the chair, I 

 removed the paper, and discovered the flattened-out body of the 

 little lizard, around which a company of ants were evidently 

 holding a consultation as to the best method of utilizing the 

 game thus accidentally provided for them. 



The particular species of emmet that was thus engaged I am 

 not able to identify. Our Florida ants have not been very care- 

 fully studied, and I think it quite possible that this is an unde- 

 scribed species. Popularly he is known here as the " racehorse " 

 ant, and the name is certainly appropriate. Of all the fast and 

 fussy little runabouts that his omnipresent family affords, he is 

 far and away the supreme. It would be hard to find even among 

 the marvels of the insect kingdom any such concentrated bundle 

 of nerves and muscles and brains. He is a little black mite of a 

 fellow, three millimetres (about an eighth of an inch) in length, 

 and it takes one hundred and sixty-two of him to weigh one grain. 

 His ordinary walk is a fast trot, but when he really gets down to 

 business even that kangaroo among insects, the flea, can not beat 

 him in getting over the ground or being in a dozen places appar- 

 ently at the same moment. Naturally he is a terrible nuisance 

 to housekeepers ; borax, corrosive sublimate, Cayenne pepper, and 

 all the other warranted prophylactics against the plague of ants 

 simply amuse him. Not long since I tried all the devices I had 

 ever heard of, and which do often prove effective with other spe- 

 cies of ants, in a vain effort to keep this active little rogue out of 

 a new barrel of sugar. A strong solution of corrosive sublimate 

 was poured in a circle on the floor around the barrel. He simply 

 waited for the floor to get dry and calmly trotted over to the 

 alluring barrel of sweets. Three hours after trying this " poison 

 guard " I found a colony of a hundred or so comfortably regaling 

 themselves upon the coveted treasure. Caustic potash dissolved 

 and used in the same way served a little better purpose, but this 

 soon solidified into a carbonate, and its usefulness was at an end. 

 I next procured some freshly ground and pure Cayenne pepper, 

 which some "scientific" newspaper correspondent had recom- 

 mended as an infallible protection against these little pests. 



