240 THE TROnCAL WORLD. 



agency of its pungent secretion converts it into a spongy 

 substance. 



On the west coast of Borneo, Mr. Adams noticed two kinds 

 of ants' nests — one species of the size of a man's hand, adher- 

 ing to the trunk of trees resembling, when cut through, a 

 section of the lungs ; the other was composed of small withered 

 bits of sticks and leaves, heaped up in the axils of branches, 

 somewhat in the form of flattened cylinders and compressed 

 cones. A third species, still more ingenious, constructs its 

 domicile out of a large leaf, bending the two halves by the weight 

 of united millions till the opposite margins meet at the under 

 surface of the mid-rib, where they are secured by a gummy 

 matter. The stores and larvae are conveyed into the nest so 

 made by regular beaten tracks along the trunk and branches of 

 the tree. 



On the large plains near Lake Dilolo, where water stands 

 so long annually as to allow the lotus and other aqueous plants 

 to come to maturity, Dr. Livingstone had occasion to admire 

 the wonderful sagacity of the ants, whom he declares to be 

 wiser than some men, as they learn by experience. When all 

 the land is submerged a foot deep, they manage to exist by 

 ascending to little houses, built of black tenacious loam, on 

 stalks of grass, and placed higher than the line of inundation. 

 This must have been the result of experience, for if they had 

 waited till the water actually invaded their habitations on the 

 ground, they would not have been able to procure materials 

 for their higher quarters, unless they dived down to the bottom 

 for every mouthful of clay. They must have been built in 

 anticipation, ' and if so,' says the celebrated traveller, ' let us 

 humbly hope that the sufferers by the late inundations in 

 France may be possessed of as much common sense as the little 

 black ants of the Dilolo plains.' 



Unable or unwilling to work themselves, some species of ants 

 make war upon others for the sole purpose of procuring bonds- 

 men, who literally and truly labour for them, and perform all 

 the domestic duties of the community ; but the Mexican honey 

 ants (Myrmecocystus Mexicanus) are, if possible, still more 

 remarkable, for here we see an animal rearing others of the 

 same species for the purpose of food. Some of these ants, 

 namely, are distinguished by an enormous swelling of the ab- 



