FoRsiiciD.E. INSECTS, (Ecodoma. 



181 



" One day," observes Mi'. Darwin, '' I fortunately 

 witnessed a miyratiou of F. sanguinea from one nest 

 to anotlier, and it was a most interesting spectacle 

 to behold the masters carefully carrying their slaves 

 in their jaws. Auotber day, my attention was struck 

 by about a score of the slave-makers liaunting the 

 same spot, and evidently not in search of food ; they 

 approached and were vigorously repulsed by an inde- 

 pendent community of the slave species [F. fusca); 

 sometimes, as many as three of these ants clinging to 

 the legs of the slave-making F. sanguinea. The latter 

 ruthlessly killed their small opponents, and carried 

 their dead bodies as food to their nest, twenty-nine 

 yards distant; but they were prevented from getting 

 any pupje to rear as slaves. I then dug up a small 

 parcel of the pupse of F. fasca from another nest, and 

 put them down on a bare spot near the place of com- 

 bat ; they were eagerly seized and carried off by the 

 tyrants, who perhaps fancied that, after all, they had 

 been victorious in their late combat." These ants 

 sometimes, though rarely, capture a little yellow ant 

 called i^o)'»«'ca_7?aiJa by naturalists. This j'ellow ant 

 is very courageous, and attacks the F. scmguinea. 



Some naturalists have doubted the existence of an 

 ant that " lays up a store for winter ;" but I feel sure 

 that many ants will be found to have this habit in 

 countries where rain, and not cold, marks the winter. 

 Colonel Sykes, for instance, found the Atta j'fovidens 

 collecting millet seed at Poonah. 



Jlr. Alfied Wallace who, with Mr. Bates, explored 

 the shores of the Amazon, could not fail to be struck 

 with the numerous species of ants, and with their habits 

 and universality. In his " Travels on the Amazon" 

 (p. 13), he thus writes. — The ants "startle you with 

 the apparition of scraps of paper, dead leaves, and 

 feathers, endued with locomotive powers ; proces- 

 sions, engaged in some abstruse engineering operations, 

 stretch across the public paths; the flowers you gather, 

 or the fruit you pluck, is covered with them, and they 

 spread over your hand in such swarms as to make 

 you hastily drop your prize. At meals they make 

 themselves quite at home upon the table-cloth, in your 

 plate, and in the sugar-basin, though not in such 

 numbers as to offer any serious obstruction to your 

 meal." Mr. Wallace records that "in these and similar 

 situations ants are to be found, and distinct species in 

 each situation. As you travel in the forests, you may 

 sec the nests of ants on the branches of the trees, 

 some of them forming large black masses several feet 

 in diameter. A gigantic black species, nearly an inch 

 and a half in length, wauders along paths in the woods 

 and gardens, while there are species so small that they 

 are kept with great difficulty out of boxes and pans, 

 unless the lids fit very closely; any dead animal 

 matter, such as small birds or insects, is sure to attract 

 them." Messrs. Bates and Wallace, when drying the 

 insects they had caught, found it necessary to hang 

 up the boxes containing them to the roof of the veran- 

 dah ; but even then they found that these inquisitorial 

 pests visited the boxes, by using the string as a ladder. 

 By soaking the string well in Andiroba oil, which is 

 very bitter, these naturalists ever after suspended 

 their insects, and preserved them from the ants. 



" Among the curious things we meet with in the 

 woods, are large heaps of earth and sand, sometimes 

 by the road-side, and sometimes extending quite across 

 the path, making the pedestrian ascend and descend 

 (a pleasing variety in this flat country), and looking 

 just as if some ' Para and Peru direct Kailway Com- 

 pany ' had commenced operations. These mounds 

 are often thirty or forty feet long, by ten or fifteen 

 wide, and about three or four feet high ; but instead 

 of being the work of a lot of railway labourers, we 

 find it is all due to the industry of a native insect, the 

 much- dreaded Sauba ant. This insect is of a light- 

 red colour, about the size of our largest English species, 

 the wood-ant, but with much more powerful jaws. 

 It does great injury to young trees, and will sometimes 

 strip them of their leaves in a single night. We often 

 see, hurrying across the pathways, rows of small green 

 leaves ; these are the Saubas, each with a piece of 

 leaf cut as smoothly as with scissors, and completely 

 hiding the body from sight. The orange tree is very 

 subject to their attacks." 



Mr. Wallace adds, that some places are so infested 

 with them, that it is useless plauting anything. Their 

 numbers are so immense, that it is impossible to 

 destroy them, as may readily be seen by the great 

 quantities of earth they remove. 



The Rev. Hamlet Clark, who visited Brazil in 1857, 

 thus writes of the ants :* — " The ants are very numer- 

 ous and most interesting ; some species construct 

 covered galleries among the branches of trees ; others 

 burrow (this is the genus CEcodoina),f for miles, six 

 or ten feet below the surface of the ground ! some are 

 carnivorous, and seem to live principally on insects ; 

 others are vegetarians ; one species in this neighbour- 

 hood is welcomed as a friend to the housekeeper, for 

 when it marches through a house not a single cock- 

 roach or spider is left behind it alive ; at Constancia 

 and other localities there is a species which, in a 

 single night, will strip a large tree of every leaf." The 

 next ant he refers to may be a species of (Ecodoma. % 

 " In the forests on the Corcovado range, we heard of — 

 but could not see — an ant which constructs its nest above 

 ground five or eight feet high ; the sides of these nests 

 are constructed of clay, worked up by mastication, so 

 that, after a few years, they obtain the consistency of 

 porous stone. In this state they have a commercial 

 value ; they are cut up into slabs or blocks, and used 

 for the purpose of lining ovens." 



Tschudi describes the swarms of a Peruvian ant 

 which the natives call naui-huacan-sisi, which means, 

 " the ant which brings tears to the eyes by its numer- 

 ous stings." § These creatures appear suddenly in 

 trains of countless myriads, and proceed forward in 

 a strait direction, without stopping. The small and 

 the weak are placed in the centre, while the large 

 and the strong flank the army, and look out for prey. 

 These swarms are called by the Peruvians Cliacus. 

 Like the Driver ants of Western Africa, they sometimes 

 enter a hut and clear it of all insects, reptiles, and 



* Zoolojiist, May IS."*?, p. bhQ\. 



t .'^cc Smith in journal of Entomology, vol. i., p. 66; ISCO. 



t II)i(I. 



§ Tschiuli's Travels in Peru, p. 438. 



