230 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



let liim know that he had disturbed their march. They possess 

 no fear, attacking with equal ferocity the largest as well as the 

 smallest animals. When any person has leaped over the band, 

 numbers of them leave the ranks and rush along the path, 

 seemingly anxious for a fight.' 



But however formidable the weapons of the ants may be, yet 

 the injuries they inflict upon the property of man, pouring over 

 his plantations like a flood, and sweeping away the fruits of his 

 labours, are of a much more lasting and serious nature than 

 their painful bite or venomous sting. 



In the West Indies, the brown-black Viviagua, about one- 

 third of an inch long, and with a prickly thorax, is the 

 greatest enemy of the coffee plantations. In one day it will 

 rob a full-grown tree of all its leaves. It digs deep subterranean 

 passages of considerable dimensions and irregular forms, with a 

 great number of hand-high galleries branching out from the 

 sides, and does even more harm to the coffee-plants by its 

 mining operations than by robbing them of their foliage. 



Other species are no less destructive to the sugar plantations, 

 either by settling in the interior of the stalks or by under- 

 mining the roots so that the plant becomes sickly and dies. 



The Saiiba or Coushie {(Ecodoma cephalotes), a species of ant 

 distinguished by its large head, is the most formidable enemy 

 of the banana and cassava plantations. Such are its numbers 

 that in a very short time it will strip off the leaves of an entire 

 field. Even where their nest is a mile distant from a 

 plantation, these arch depredators know how to find it, and soon 

 form a highway, about half a foot broad, on which they keep 

 up the most active communications with the object of their 

 attack. In masterly order, side by side, one army is seen to 

 move onwards towards the field, while another is returning to 

 the nest. In this last column each individual carries a round 

 piece of leaf, about the size of a sixpence, which is held by one 

 of its edges. If the distance is too great, a party meets the 

 w^eary carriers half way, and relieves them of their load. 

 Although innumerable ants may thus be moving along, yet 

 Hone of them will ever be seen to be in the other's way ; and all 

 jgoes on with the regularity of clock-work. 



A third party is no less actively employed on the scene of 

 destruction, cutting out circular pieces of the leaves, which, as 



