VOL. LXXX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 6QI 



plants incapable of affording the above protection: such, for instance, is the 

 coffee tree. It is indeed sufficiently firm in the ground, but it has only one large 

 tap root, which goes straight downwards, and its lateral roots are so small as to 

 afford no shelter against rain. ♦ So again, the roots of the cotton shrub run too 

 near the surface of the earth to prevent the access of rain, and are neither suffi- 

 ciently permanent, nor firm enough to resist the agitation by the usual winds. 

 The same observation will be found true with respect to cocoa, plantains, maize, 

 tobacco, indigo, and many other species of trees and plants. Trees or plants of 

 the first description always suffer more or less in lands infested with these ants; 

 whereas those of the latter never do. Hence we may fairly conclude, that the 

 mischief done by these insects is occasioned only by their lodging and making 

 their nests about the roots of particular trees or plants. Thus the roots of the 

 sugar-canes are somehow or other so much injured by them, as to be incapable 

 of performing their office of supplying due nourishment to the plants, which 

 therefore become sickly and stinted, and consequently do not afford juices fit for 

 making sugar in either tolerable quantity or quality. 



That these ants do not feed on any part of the canes or trees affected, seems 

 very clear, for no loss of substance in either the one or the other has ever been 

 observed; nor have they ever been seen carrying off vegetable substances of any 

 sort. The truth of this will further appear by the following fact. A very fine 

 lime-tree, in the pasture of Mount William estate, at a considerable distance 

 from any canes, but near the dwelling house, had sickened and died soon after 

 the ants made their appearance on that estate. After it had remained in that 

 state, without a single leaf, or the least verdure, for several months, on exami- 

 nation, a very few ants appeared about it; but when with the manager's permis- 

 sion it was grubbed out, a most astonishing quantity of ants and ants' nests, full 

 of eggs, were found about its roots, all of which were quite dead, and many of 

 them rotten. That this tree constituted no part of their food is quite certain; 

 but, while it continued to afford them proper security for their nests, they still 

 continued their abode. 



On the contrary, there is the greatest presumption that these ants are carni- 

 vorous, and feed entirely on animal substances; for if a dead insect, or animal 

 food of any sort, was laid in their way, it was immediately carried off. It was 

 found almost impossible to preserve cold victuals from them. The largest car- 

 cases, as soon as they began to become putrid, so as that they could separate the 

 parts, soon disappeared. Negroes with sores had difficulty to keep the ants from 

 the edges of them. They destroyed all other vermin, rats in particular, of 

 which they cleared every plantation they came on, which they probably effected 

 by attacking their young. It was found that poultry, or other small stock, could 

 be raised with the greatest difficulty; and the eyes, nose, and other emunctories 



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