4i8 



TROPICAL AMERICA AND ITS ANIMALS 



an allied species in Madagascar, thereby presenting a remarkable parallelism in 

 development to the side-necked tortoises and boas. 



Ants are strongly represented in the region, many of them being remarkable 

 on account of their habits. The parasol-ants, well exemplified by the South 

 Brazilian Atta hystrix, move, for instance, in troops like a green river across the 

 forest-paths, each worker carrying on its head a circular piece of leaf half an inch 

 across, which it has cut out from some leaf close by. Others exhibit the slave- 



C 



MORPHO HECUBA. 



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making habit in great perfection. In the case of an Amazonian species, Polyergus 

 rufescens, it seems that new colonies are formed by one or more fertilised females 

 effecting an entrance into a nest of a species, Formica fusca, belonging to a totally 

 different group. The intruding female, unless she be stopped by hostile workers, 

 immediately makes her way to the domicile of the reigning queen, \ hom, when 

 found, she attacks and finally kills with her powerful jaws. During the contest 

 the attendant workers remain stupefied with fright, but at the death of their 

 legitimate queen quickly receive the foreign female in her place. In the second 



