Amazon Ants. 301 



measuring forty feet in diameter by two feet in height, are 

 the domes which overhe the entrances to the vast subterra- 

 nean galleries of the saliba ants. These ants are eaten by 

 the Rio Negro Indians, and esteemed a luxury ; while the 

 Tapajos tribes use them to season their mandioca sauce. 

 Akin to the vegetable-feeding saiibas are the carnivorous 

 ecitons, or foraging ants, of which Bates found ten distinct 

 species. They hunt for prey in large organized armies, 

 almost every species having its own special manner of 

 marching and hunting. Fortunately the ecitons choose 

 the thickest part of the forest. The fire-ant is the great 

 plague on the Tapajos. It is small, and of a shiny red- 

 dish color; but its sting is very painful, and it disputes 

 every fragment of food with the inhabitants. All eatables 

 and hammocks have to be hung by cords smeared with 

 copaiba balsam. 



The traveler on the Amazon frequently meets with con- 

 ical hillocks of compact earth, from three to five feet high, 

 from which radiate narrow covered galleries or arcades. 

 The architects of these wonderful structures are the ter- 

 mites, or " white ants," so called, though they belong to a 

 lower order of insects, widely differing fi-om the true ants. 

 The only thing in common is the principle of division of 

 labor. The termite neuters are subdivided into two classes, 

 soldiers and workers, both wingless and blind. Their great 

 enemy is the ant-eater ; but it is a singular fact, noticed by 

 Bates, that the soldiers only attach themselves to the long 

 worm-like tongue of this animal, so that the workers, on 

 whom the prosperity of the termitarum depends, are saved 

 by the self-sacrifice of the fighting caste. Tlie office of the 

 termites in the tropics seems to be to hasten the decompo- 

 sition of decaying vegetation. But they also work their 

 way into houses, trunks, wardrobes, and libraries. " It is 

 principally owing to their destructiveness " (wrote Hum- 



