130 NESTS OF INSECTS 



Although to anyone merely travelling through it, this upper 

 forest seems, especially in the cold season, to be singularly 

 deficient in animal life, yet to those who will carefully observe, 

 as they ramble through these woods, there are numerous small 

 living creatures well worth careful study. One cannot pass 

 many yards along a forest path without noticing here and there 

 a long white bag hanging on the trees and bushes. These vary 

 in length from about six inches to a foot, or even eighteen inches, 

 and are a long oval hi shape ; the upper part shines with a silky 

 lustre, and the whole would do so, but for its being filled at the 

 lower part with a mass of dark brown earthy substance, which 

 soils its purity. On cutting open the upper portion of the bag, 

 which is tough and strong, it is found to be filled with a mass 

 of brown caterpillars, about an inch and a half long, all wriggling 

 about when thus disturbed in their comfortable home. The 

 dark substance is evidently the droppings of these caterpillars ; 

 and the opening at the lower end, sometimes small holes 

 around it, give exit and entrance, for generally two or three of 

 the insects are seen crawling on the outside. It would appear, 

 therefore, that this silken bag is the nest or home spun by the 

 caterpillars, a common habitation in which they undergo the 

 next change before becoming perfect insects. One always sees 

 that the branches near that on which the bag is suspended are 

 stripped of the leaves, no doubt by its inmates. I noticed that, 

 a day or two after I had cut open one of these bags, a thin film 

 of web had been spun over the opening, so as to close up the 

 entrance I had unceremoniously made into the privacy of the 

 little community. 



No one can pass through the upper or lower forests without 

 noticing the much more prominent nests made in the trees by 

 another insect, a small species of black ant. These nests are 

 often as large as a football, and are apparently made of cow- 

 dung, or earthy and vegetable matter, forming a coarse papery 

 substance ; they are peopled by large numbers of ants, and are 

 dark brown in colour. If one is procured not an easy matter, 

 for the little inhabitants rush out and attack the intruder, and 

 dig their jaws into one's flesh in a way to make one jump it 

 will be seen, on cutting open the nest vertically, that there is a 

 series of thin floors about half-an-inch apart and supported by 

 pillars. The ants run about frantically, their chief care being 



