274 ANTS AND TERMITES 



than their bite, and the inflammation and pain last for several 

 days after. 



The black fire-ant of Gruiana, though very small, is capable 

 of inflicting excessive pain. " These insects," says Stedman, 

 " live in such amazing multitudes together, 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 innumerable 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." 



Of the more than seventy species of ants which occur in 

 Ceylon alone. Sir E. Tennent describes the Dimiya, or great 

 red ant, as the most formidable. " Like all their race, these 

 ants are in perpetual motion, forming lines on the ground, 

 along which they pass in continual procession to and from the 

 trees on which they reside. They are the most irritable of the 

 whole order in Ceylon, biting with such intense ferocity as to 

 render it difficult for the unclad native to collect the fruit from 

 the mango-trees, which the red ants especially frequent. They • 

 drop from the branches upon travellers in the jungle, attacking 

 them with venom and fury, and inflicting intolerable pain both 

 upon animals and man. On examining the structure of head 

 through a microscope, I found that the mandibles, instead of meet- 

 ing in contact, are so hooked as to cross each other at the points, 

 whilst the inner line is sharply serrated throughout its entire 

 length, thus occasioning the intense pain of their bite, as com- 

 pared with that of the ordinary ant." 



Another species, called the Kaddiya, is so much dreaded by 

 the Singhalese, that, according to one of their legends, the Cobra 

 invested it with her own venom in admiration of its singular 

 courage. 



" Having, while in Angola, accidentally stepped upon a nest 

 of red ants," says Livingstone, "not an instant seemed to elapse 

 before a simultaneous attack was made on various unprotected 



