714 MR. R. B. WHITE ON ATTA CEPHALOTES. [Dec. 2, 



whether hitter, sweet, pungent, caustic, tender or tough, every thing 

 is attacked by it, I was led to remark carefully the use to which the 

 ant puts the enormous quantity of foliage which it carries to its nest. 

 After watching the various foraging parties narrowly, I saw that 

 some of them were engaged in carrying food, principally fruits or 

 portions of fruit, sweet buds and blossoms, maize, rice, etc. Others, 

 again, carry only portions of leaves, showing no selection in the 

 quality, as also" bits of straw, stick, and similar things. I then 

 further remarked that the ants only employ this vegetable matter 

 to make beds, upon which the eggs are deposited and hatched by 

 the heat produced by the fermentation of the mass of leaves. The 

 ants do not eat these portions of leaf ; and the larvae are fed upon 

 selected food. When a brood has been hatched, the ants clean up 

 their nest and carry out all the decomposed vegetable matter from 

 the egg-beds. This they do periodically ; and the half-rotten frag- 

 ments of leaves may always be distinguished from the pellets of 

 earth &c. which the ants ordinarily bring out of their excavations. 

 This hotbed matter is also always thrown out in heaps apart, and in 

 large ant-hills often amounts to ten bushels and upwards. 



The only efficacious remedy which the farmer has hitherto used 

 against these enemies is the extermination of the ant-colony, which 

 is effected by digging out the nest, flooding it with water or poisoning 

 its inmates with sulphur or acid. But it is often impossible to put 

 this plan in practice — where a clearing or plantation is surrounded by 

 forests or uncultivated ground, in which hundreds and thousands of 

 ant-hills are to be found. I have tried, as many people before me, 

 all sorts of schemes, including the use of all the abominable-smelling 

 and tasting compounds which can be used without killing the plants 

 which one wishes to protect, and have found all inefficacious. 



But it seems that the real remedy is near at hand ; and it was 

 shown to me by a negro. 



When a plantation or garden is attacked, all one has to do is to 

 procure a bushel or so of the decayed leaf beds thrown out of an 

 ant-hill entirely unconnected with that from which the invading 

 ants proceed, and scatter this matter on the ant-roads and about 

 the plantation. 



The effect is miraculous. A panic siezes the ants. They drop 

 their burdens instantly ; the word is passed along the roads ; and 

 empty-handed the whole army hurries off to the nest. They will 

 not return to the same plantation for many weeks ; and even then 

 they avoid all spots in which traces of this (to them) offensive 

 matter may remain. The smallest dose suffices ; and a bushel of 

 rotten bedding will defend acres of ground. But care must be taken, 

 as remarked, to procure this matter from a distinct ant-hill. If it 

 be from the same nest, the ants take no notice of it. 



I have seen this plan tried repeatedly during the last few months, 

 and it has never failed. The biggest army of ants, engineers, 

 pioneers, directors-general and all, is utterly discomfited by this 

 simple means of defence. What the ants see in it I cannot say ; but 

 I fancy that they imagine themselves to be in danger of being 



