HOUSE ANTS 277 



activity. The ants themselves, particularly the winged females, 

 are considered a great delicacy by the Indians, who eat the 

 abdomen, either raw or roasted. The taste is said to be agree- 

 ably saccharine. 



Not satisfied with devouring his harvests, the tropical ants, as 

 I have already mentioned, leave man no rest even within doors, 

 and trespass upon his household comforts in a thousand various 

 \vays. 



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

 counted no less than seven different species of ants among the 

 t ormenting inmates of his hut. The diminutive red Amache wa^ 

 ])articularly fond of sweets. Favoured by its smallness,it pene- 

 tiates through the imperceptible openings of a cork, and the 

 traveller was often obliged to throw away the syrup which in 

 Ihat humid and sultry country replaces the use of crystallised 

 sugar, from its having been changed into an ant-comfit. This 

 i loublesome lover of sweets lives under the corner-posts of the 

 lnit, so that it is quite impossible to dislodge him. The number 

 I )f the Puca ticse, a red ant, of the ordinary size, was still greater ; 

 tlie trunks and papers were swarming with it, in spite of every 

 precaution, so that it was quite incomprehensible how it found 

 means to overcome all the obstacles that had been devised 

 a<,^ainst it. 



" The only possible way," says Stedman, " of keeping the ants 

 iVom the refined sugar is by hanging the loaf to the ceiling by a 

 nail, and making a ring of dry chalk around it, very thick, 

 wliich crumbles down the moment the ants attempt to pass it. 

 I imagined that placing my sugar-boxes in the middle of a tub, 

 and on stone surrounded by deep water, would have kept back 

 tliis formidable enemy; but to no purpose: whole armies of the 

 lighter sort, to my astonishment, marched over the surface, and 

 but very few of them were drowned. The main body constantly 

 scaled the rock, and, in spite of all my efforts, made their entry 

 tlirough the keyholes, after which, the only way to clear the 

 i^arrison is, to expose it to a hot sun, which the invaders cannot 

 bear, and all march off in a few minutes." 



The devastations of the house-ants are peculiarly hateful to 

 tlie naturalist, whose collections, often gathered with so much 

 danger and trouble, they pitilessly destroy. Eichard Schomburgk 

 suspended boxes with insects from the ceiling by threads strongly 



