406 EEMAEEABLE USE OF ANTS IJ!f ASIA MINOE. 



they have once seized is ■well known. M. Mocquerys even 

 assures us that the Indians of Brazil made use of this quality in 

 the case of vFounds ; causing an ant to bite the two lips of the cut 

 and thus bring them together, after wbich they snip off the ant's 

 bead, which thus holds the lips together. He asserts that he 

 has often seen natives with wounds in course of healing with the 

 assistance of seven or eight ants' heads." * 



The species which Mocquerys saw thus employed in Brazil 

 was the w^ell-known Saiiba f or Umbrella-ant (now called Atta 

 cephalotes, Linn. ; the genus Atta being the creation of Fabricius). 

 It is admirably described by Bates %, who truly speaks of the 

 heads of the " worker-majors," one of the three forms of workers, 

 as "enormously large, hard, and indestructible "§ ; he says, 

 however, that these ants are "not very pugnacious " ||. The 

 Umbrella-ants are peculiar to Tropical America, Atta cepJia- 

 lotes, L., extending into Mexico, 



It is remarkable that neither "Wallace nor Bates should, appa- 

 rently, have heard of the use of the Umbrella-ant as a substitute 

 for the stitching-up of a wound ; but it is still more extraordinary 

 that Mocquerys' statement should be confirmed, after the lapse 

 of so many years, by the discovery of the identical method among 

 the Greek inhabitants of Asia Minor, Mr. Issigonis, who has 

 unfortunately just telegraphed that he is unable to come to this 

 meeting on account of indisposition, tells me that the operation 

 is a frequent one in the vicinity of Smyrna, and is, to the best of 

 his belief, practised by the Turks themselves as well as by the 

 other nationalities found in Asiatic Turkey. Unfortunately, he 

 can give no information as to whether this treatment of cuts is 

 followed in Grreece, European Turkey, or elsewhere. 



* Ann. Soc. Ent. Prance, 2 ser., torn. ii. p. Ixvii. The actual record is as 

 follows, ■viz. : — " Bulletin Entomologique. Seance clu 23 Octobre, 1844. Cotn- 

 muaications. M. Eeiche donne, d'apres M. E. Mocquerys, quelques details sur 

 une fourmi du genre fficodome [CEcodoma cephalotes, Latr., Formica cephalotes, 

 Linn.) * * * -x- * Les sauvages emploient la meme espece pour retenir 

 rapproches les bords d'une plaie ; ils font mordre par cet insecte les deux bords 

 de la plaie, puis leur arrachent I'abdomen et le thorax et ne laissent par con- 

 sequent que la t§te, qui maintient ainsi les bords de la plaie rapproches. II 

 n'est pas rare de Toir des Bresiliens indigenes qui ont ainsi une plaie en voie de 

 cicatrisation au moyen de sept ou huit tetes de cette fourmi.'' 



t " Saiiba " is the Indian name of this ant, and means, as Prof. Trail, F.R.S., 

 kindly informs me, " the destroyer of the leaf." 



X ' The jSTaturalist on the Eiver Amazons,' pp. 23-33. 



§ Page 31, il Page 32, 



