ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



1315 



PARASOL ANTS ON THE MARCH 



twigSj in the upper layer of debris. Sometimes 

 they seemed to be living in close association 

 with real ants with no signs of hostility on 

 either side. 



A very few immature wood roaches repre- 

 sented the order Orthoptera^ while the Hemip- 

 tera or true bugs had only a slightly better 

 showing. Earlier stages of these insects lived 

 in the middle layer^ while those in the upper 

 were quite adult and were ready to fly. 



Beetles of small size were abundant and of 

 numerous species. Of about fifty which I gath- 

 ered, about sixty per cent were rove beetles. 

 All the others were slow travellers, or on dis- 

 covery pretended to be dead, but the rove beetles 

 were very agile, and never lost any opportunity 

 of trying to escape capture. 



Some tiny flies had apparently just emerged 

 from their pupae in the upper layer, these be- 

 ing the only representatives of their order, 

 while of the Lepidoptera there were only two 

 tiny moths among the dry leaves of the top 

 stratum. 



Ants were the most abundant form of life, 

 both in numbers and species. They lived in the 

 upper layers and with the exception of the great, 

 black, solitary fellows who apparently had been 

 walking about on the top of the leaf stratum, 

 all were of small size. Their colonies were ap- 

 parently complete but very small, a very minute 

 twig being packed full of individuals from six 

 to fourteen in number with a half dozen pupae. 

 A careful examination of these ants has showed 

 that there are no fewer than seventeen species, 

 two of which are representatives of most re- 

 markable new genera. 



Finally mollusks were found in small num- 

 bers, all very small, some with flat shells, others 

 with steeply turreted ones. 



In addition to all these was a host of unknown 

 forms, immature or in some unrecognizable early 

 stage of development. Some had huge jaws and 



the body encircled with a dense chevaux-de-frise 

 of horny, frond-like spikes. Others were so 

 simple that their relationships could only be 

 guessed at. I have elsewhere gone into greater 

 details of this host of small folk.* 



One thing was evident early in my explora- 

 tion. I was having to do with a world of small 

 people. No insects of large size were in any 

 layer of the debris. The largest would be very 

 small in comjjarison with a May beetle. An- 

 other fact which impressed me was the dura- 

 bility of chitin. The remains of beetles, con- 

 sidering the rareness of living ones, was re- 

 markable. The hard wing cases, the thorax 

 armor, the segments of wasps, eyeless head 

 masks, all these still remained perfect in shape 

 and vivid in color. Even in the deepest layers 

 where all else had disintegrated and returned 

 to the elements, these shards of death were like 

 new. 



Day after day as I worked with my face close 

 to the mold, I was constantly aware of the keen, 

 strong, pungent odor. It hinted of the age-old 

 dissolution, century after centui-y, which had 

 been going on. Leaves had fallen, not in a sud- 

 den autumnal down-pour, but in a never ending 

 drift, day after day, month after month. With 

 a daily rain for moisture, with a temperature 

 of three figures for the quicker increase of bac- 

 teria, and an excess of humidity to foster quick 

 decay, the jungle floor was indeed a laboratory 

 of vital work — where only analytic chemistry 

 was allowed full sway, and the mj^stery of syn- 

 thetic life was ever handicapped and ever a 

 mystery. 



Before the vessel docked we had completed 

 our task and had secured over five hundred 

 creatures from this lesser cosmos. At least twice 

 as many remained, but in making calculations I 

 estimated that the mold had sheltered a thou- 



^Zoologica, Vol. II, No. 4. 



