244 GO TO THE ANT 



very few species that render any service to man, and that, 

 of course, only incidentally. Unlike most other members 

 of their class, the driver-ants have no settled place of resi- 

 dence ; they are vagabonds and wanderers upon the face of 

 the earth, formican tramps, blind beggars, who lead a 

 gipsy existence, and keep perpetually upon the move, 

 smelling their way cautiously from one camping-place to 

 another. They march by night, or on cloudy days, like 

 wise tropical strategists, and never expose themselves to 

 the heat of the day in broad sunshine, as though they were 

 no better than the mere numbered British Tommy Atkins 

 at Coomassie or in the Soudan. They move in vast armies 

 across country, driving everything before them as they go ; 

 for they belong to the stinging division, and are very 

 voracious in their personal habits. Not only do they eat 

 up the insects in their line of march, but they fall even 

 upon larger creatures and upon big snakes, which they 

 attack first in the eyes, the most vulnerable portion. When 

 they reach a negro village the inhabitants turn out en 

 masse, and run away, exactly as if the visitors were Eng- 

 lish explorers or brave Marines, bent upon retaliating for 

 the theft of a knife by nobly burning down King Tom's 

 town or King Jumbo's capital. Then the negroes wait in 

 the jungle till the little black army has passed on, after 

 clearing out the huts by the way of everything eatable. 

 When they return they find their calabashes and saucepans 

 licked clean, but they also find every rat, mouse, lizard, 

 cockroach, gecko, and beetle completely cleared out from 

 the whole village. Most of them have cut and run at the 

 first approach of the drivers ; of the remainder, a few 

 blanched and neatly-picked skeletons alone remain to tell 

 the tale. 



As I wish to be considered a veracious historian, I will 

 not retail the further strange stories that still find their 



