TROPICAL ANTS. 237 



soon as they drop upon the ground, are immediately seized by 

 the attentive and indefatigable carriers. Neither fire nor water 

 can prevent them from proceeding with their work. Though 

 thousands may be killed, yet in less than an hour all the bodies 

 will have been removed. Should the highAvay be closed by an 

 insurmountable obstacle, another is soon laid out, and after a 

 few hours the operations, momentarily disturbed, resume their 

 former activity. 



The use of the leaves is to thatch the curious domelike 

 edifices which these indefatigable builders raise over their 

 burrows, and to prevent the loose earth from falling in. Some 

 of these domes are of gigantic dimensions, measuring two feet in 

 height and forty feet in diameter — a prodigious size when 

 compared with the puny proportions of the tiny architects that 

 raise them. Division of labour is carried on to a wonderful 

 extent in these buildings, for the labourers who fetch the 

 leaves do not place them, but merely fling them down on the 

 ground, when they are picked up by a relay of workers who lay 

 them in their proper order. As soon as they have been 

 properly arranged they are covered with small pellets of earth, 

 and in a very short time they are quite hidden by their earthy 

 covering. From these domes cylindrical shafts lead down into 

 the mysterious recesses of the burrows, whose subterranean 

 galleries are so vast and complicated that they have never been 

 fully investigated. Some idea of their extent may be formed 

 from the fact that sulphur smoke having been blown into a 

 nest, one of the outlets was detected at a distance of seventy 

 yards. 



Not satisfied with devouring his harvests, the tropical ants 

 leave man no rest even within doors, and trespass upon his 

 household comforts in a thousand various ways. 



In Mainas, a -province on the Upper Amazon, Professor 

 Poppig counted no less than seven different species of ants 

 among the tormenting inmates of his hut. The diminutive red 

 Amache was particularly fond of sweets. Favoured by its 

 smallness, it penetrates through the imperceptible openings of 

 a cork, and the traveller was often obliged to throw away the 

 syrup which in that humid and sultry country replaces the use 

 of crystallised sugar, from its having been changed into an ant- 

 comfit. This troublesome lover of sweets lives under the 



