134 ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 



seeking someone. Suddenly it met a sister, and both stood 

 still. It touched the latter with its antenna?, and then ran in 

 the same way to a second and third and slipped out through 

 the bamboos, so that I could no longer follow it. It was not 

 long before an ant came down the string, then a second, a 

 third, and so on. In an hour and a-half the body was 

 thoroughly perforated by them, and in twenty-four hours 

 all the flesh had disappeared off the bones. The next day I 

 repeated the same mano3uvre, but laid a piece of sugar on the 

 ground near the stick, so as to see if the first who might 

 discover the dead body would tell his comrades which were 

 employed with the sugar. An ant soon ran down the string 

 to the bird. It tried it, and then ran back to the ground. 

 After running about for a moment, it mingled with the 

 rogues busy with the sugar. Here I of course lost sight of 

 it, but I noticed a great commotion in the crowd. About 

 half left the sugar, and in a short time the dead body was 

 again covered with ants. It was clear that the finder had 

 informed the others ! 



" The next day I hung a dead body by a string t6 a cross- 

 beam of the rancho, so that it dangled freely in the air. 

 Until the evening not an ant was to be seen, but the body 

 was half-devoured by the next morning. So during the 

 night an ant out hunting bad discovered the body and had 

 communicated the fact to the others. 



"It is a hard matter to protect any eatables from these 

 creatures, let the custody be ever so close. The legs of 

 cupboards and tables in or on which eatables are kept are 

 placed in vessels of water. I myself did this, but I none 

 the less found thousands of ants in the cupboard next 

 morning. It was a puzzle to me how they crossed the 

 water, but the puzzle was soon solved. For I found a straw 

 in one of the saucers, which lay obliquely across the edge 

 of the pan and touched the leg of the press : this they had 

 used for a bridge. Hundreds were drowned in the water, 

 apparently because disorder had reigned at first, those 

 coming down with booty meeting those going up. But now 

 there was perfect order ; the descending stream used one side 

 of the straw, the ascending the other. I now pushed the 

 straw about an inch away from the cupboard leg; a terrible 

 confusion arose. In a moment the leg immediately over the 

 water was covered with hundreds of ants, feeling for the 



