114 A PLANTATION IN A TROPICAL FOREST 
my pistol in my trunk. I sincerely hope that the jaguars 
and peccaries were as much afraid of me as I of them. 
THE ANTS. 
The ants play a great part in the processes of nature. 
The Termites, sometimes called white ants, make huge 
spherical nests on the trunks or branches of trees. They 
are not true ants; they have the back part of the body likea 
small white grub or worm, the front portion, including the 
legs, like an ant. They eat all fallen timber, and in fact all 
kinds of wood, with few exceptions. Mahogany, Spanis 
cedar and one or two others seem to be distasteful to them, 
and only such wood can be used in building. Going 
through the forest I noticed paths about eight inches wide 
running in all directions, and as I had begun to wonder 
what they were, I observed a procession of small brown 
ants ; each held in its mouth a small piece of green leaf as 
large as my finger-nail. They take these bits of leaf to 
their nests, where they seem to serve as food for their 
young, but unfortunately they have acquired the taste for 
leaves of valuable trees, especially cacao trees, and the 
planter is filled with deep wrath at them, and wages a bit- 
ter war against them. Their nests look like a barrow-load 
of sand dumped on the ground. Don Clarencio, my host, 
was treating the ants to bisulphide of carbon. He soaked 
cotton waste in this and buried it in the nest, to the 
great discomfort of the ants. As near as I could make out, 
the battle was a drawn one. . 
ARMY ANTS. 
There is another species of ant that would commend 
itself to the housekeeper, the army ant. These ants go 
through the forest in great armies of many hundreds of 
thousands, devouring every living thing in their path. 
When they reach a house, be it hut or plantation 
hacienda, they set immediately to work and woe to any 
