The Zoologist— July, 1808. 1281 



and finding a plentiful source of good food, would find no difficulty in 

 conducting parties the best route to it, and soon a good smooth road 

 is constructed, over which in crowds the workers are seen through the 

 night,; or in cool cloudy days, transporting the leaves to the city : this 

 is their mode, invariably, in a country where the grass has been 

 destroyed, and we can see and understand the method and the purpose 

 for which they work ; but in a country which is heavily coated with 

 high grass it is not so easy to discover by what process they lay off a 

 tunnel and successfully carry it in a direct line to the selected tree or 

 garden spot a quarter of a mile distant, and sometimes beyond a con- 

 siderable streamlet of running water. On one occasion, on a log that 

 lay across the Ye-Gua Creek, the ants passed over to a gentleman's 

 garden, and were rapidly cutting his vegetables to pieces. The owner, 

 hoping to rid the garden of these troublesome insects, cut the log 

 away, and it floated off down the creek : he was mistaken in his 

 calculations, for it was but a few days after when the ants were 

 ravaging the garden in as great numbers as they were previous to the 

 removal of the log. After searching unsuccessfully for some inter- 

 locking tree that might afford them a passage, it was observed that the 

 ants came out from several holes, situated on the creek side of the 

 garden. Subsequently it was discovered that, on a large ant mound 

 crowning a sandy point near the edge of some post-oak timber, two 

 hundred yards from the creek, there were quantities of the black soil 

 of the Ye Gna bottom thrown out, proving that the second visit of the 

 ants to the gentleman's garden had been effected by a tunnel beneath 

 the bed of the creek : the channel of the creek, at that place, is fifteen 

 or twenty feet deep, and from bank to bank on top of the bluff about 

 thirty feet By what degree of the instinctive powers was all this 

 engineering and truly great project accomplished! 



I have never seen the cutting ants fighting among themselves, or 

 with any of the other species. I look upon them as the most peaceable, 

 the mist sagacious, and at the same time the most destructive, of the 

 ant kind. 



On the Nestiny of the Egyptian Vulture (Neophron percuopterus). 

 By Captain H. W. Feilden. 



This bird, common to the three continents of Europe, Asia and 

 Africa, is abundantly distributed throughout India, extending from 



SECOND SERIES — VOL. III. 2 L 



