360 ME. R. SPRUCE ON IKSECT-MiaEATIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



know all that ; but let them first have time to clear the house of 

 vermin; for if even a rat or a snake be caught napping, they will soon 

 pick his bones." They had been in the house but a very little 

 while when we heard a great commotion inside the walls, chiefly 

 of mice careering madly about and uttering terrified squeals ; and 

 the ants were allowed to remain thus, and hunt over the house at 

 will, for three days and nights, when, having exhausted their legi- 

 timate game, they began to be troublesome in the kitchen and on 

 the dinner-table. " Now," said Dona Juanita, " is the time for 

 the water cure ;" and she set her maids to sprinkle water over the 

 visitors, who at once took the hint,_ gathered up their scattered 

 squadrons, reformed in column, and resumed their march. 

 "Whenever their inquisitions became troublesome to myself during 

 the three days, I took the liberty to scatter a few suggestive drops 

 among them, and it always sufficed to make them turn aside ; but 

 any attempt at a forcible ejectment they were sure to resent with 

 tooth and tail ; and their bite and sting were rather formidable, for 

 they were large and lusty ants. For weeks afterwards the 

 squeaking of a mouse and the whirring of a cockroach were sounds 

 unheard in that house*. 



The most remarkable migration that I have myself witnessed 

 in South America is that of the great Wood-Ibis (Tantalus locu- 

 lator), called "Jabiru" in Brazil, " Gauan" in Yenezuela, between 

 the Amazon and the Orinoco, a distance of from 300 to 500 miles 

 in a straight line, but a thousand or more following the course of 

 the rivers. The migrations are so timed that the birds are always 

 on the one river or the other when the water is lowest and there 

 is most sandy beach exposed, afi'ording the greatest extent of 

 fishing-ground. In the years 1853 and 1854, when I was at San 

 Carlos del Eio Negro (lat. 1° 53|' S.) I saw them going northward' 

 in November and returning southward in May, and had the plea- 

 sure of having some of them stay to dine with me. One of their 

 halting-places on their way to the Orinoco was on islands near the 

 mouth of the Casiquiari, at only a few hours' journey above San 

 Carlos. There I have seen them roosting on the tree-tops in such 

 long close lines, that by moonlight the trees seemed clad with 

 white flowers. They descend to sandy spits of islands to fish in the 



* The ants called "Carnicei-as," or Butchers, in Maynas, are probably of a tribe 

 distinct from the Foragers ; for they are burrowing ants, and are said to prefer the 

 flesh -of human carcases to any other food. Padre Velaseo, in his ' History of 

 Quito,' assures us that they will make a perfect skeleton of a corpse the very day 

 it is buried, and that they devour any disabled animal, however large, they find 

 in the forest. 



