EXPLANATOEY INDEX. .361 



"We passed too, in the path, an object curious enough, if 

 not beautiful. Up a smooth stem ran a little rib, seemingly 

 of earth and dead wood, almost straight, and about half an 

 inch across, leading to a great brown lump among the branches, 

 as big as a bushel basket. We broke it open, and found it 

 a covered gallery, swarming with life. Brown, ant-like crea- 

 tures, white, maggot-like creatures, of several shapes and 

 sizes, were hm'rying up and down, as busy as human beings 

 in Cheapside. They were Termites, " white ants " — of which 

 of the many species I know not — and the lump above was 

 their nest. But why they should find it wisest to pack their 

 nest aloft is as difficult to guess, as to guess vv^hy they take 

 the trouble to build this gallery up to it, instead of walking 

 up the stem in the open air. It may be that they are afraid 

 of birds. It may be, too, that they actually dislike the 

 light. At all events, the majority of them — the workers and 

 soldiers, I believe, without exception — are blind, and do all 

 their work by an intensely developed sense of touch, and it 

 may be of smell and hearing also. Be that as it may, we 

 should have seen them, had we had time to wait, repair the 

 breach in the gallery, with as much discipline and division of 

 labour as average human workmen in a manufactory." 



Ants' nests on ground. Also Termites. 



Axt-Bear, or Great Ant-eater, [Myrmecophaga jtthata). 

 — Waterton's statement that it could be a dangerous foe was 

 long discredited. Now, as Waterton has rescued so many 

 animals from the evil report that they were dangerous, he 

 might have been believed when he said that the Ant-bear, 

 though it never attacks without provocation, is a terrible 

 antagonist when irritated. As usual, Waterton was right and 

 the critics wrong. In Brown's Canoe Life in Guiana thei'e is 

 a story of a doubly fatal fight between an Ant-bear and a 

 native, which completely corroborates Waterton's statement. 



" We had not gone many miles before the guide lost the 

 path, and we all scattered to look for it. In doing so, I 

 walked almost on the top of a sleeping Ant-bear, which, 



