DESTRUCTIVENESS OF THE ANTS 455 



place on the Tapajos that there was scarcely a square inch of ground free 

 from them. (Op. cit., p. 202.) 



The only figures I am able to give in regard to the sizes of ant colonies 

 are the estimates given by Azevedo Sampaio, a Brazilian entomologist 

 who has studied the saubas. He estimates the colonies at from 175,000 

 to 600,000 individuals.!^ 



DESTRUCTIVENESS 



In speaking in general terms of the destructiveness of ants in tropical 

 America, Humboldt says i^* 



"Those wbo do not know the immense quantity of ants that infest every 

 country within the torrid zone, can scarcely form an idea of the destruction 

 and of the sinking of the ground occasioned by these insects. They abound to 

 such a degree on the spot where Valencia is placed that their excavations re- 

 semble subterranean canals, which are filled with water in the time of the 

 rains and becomes very dangerous to the builders. Here recourse has not been 

 had to the extraordinary means emploj^ed at the beginning of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury in the island of St. Domingo, when troops of ants ravaged the fine 

 plains of La Yega and the rich possessions of the order of St. Francis. The 

 monks, after having in vain burnt the larvae of the ants, and had recourse to 

 fumigations, advised the inhabitants to choose by lot a saint, who would serve 

 as an ahagado contra las liormigas. The honour of the choice fell on St. Satur- 

 nin, and the ants disappeared as soon as the first festival of this saint was cele- 

 brated. Incredulity has made great progress since the time of the conquest, 

 and it was on the back of the Cordilleras only that I found a small chapel, 

 destined, according to its inscription, for prayers to be addressed to Heaven for 

 the destruction of the termites.''* 



The destruction wrought by the true ants is confined chiefly, but not 

 entirely, to agricultural products. It is no uncommon thing to find spots 

 where certain ants are so abundant and so destructive that the planters 

 simply leave them alone. Sometimes it happens that after clearing a 

 piece of land, and beginning their planting, the farmers find the ants so 

 destructive that those particular fields are abandoned. In the coffee re- 

 gions certain ants, popularly laiown as the saubas, are so destructive that 

 a systematic and unceasing war has to be waged upon them in order to 

 save the coffee trees. But their attacks are not confined to coffee trees 

 by any manner of means. 



The following description of the saubas is given by Gabriel Scares de 

 Souza, one of the earliest writers on Brazil (1587).^^ 



13 Azevedo Sampaio: Sauva ou Manhu-uftra, pp. 50, 54. S. Paulo, 1894. 



1* Alexander de Humboldt and Aim6 Bonpland : Personal narrative of travels to the 

 equatorial regions of the new continent, vol. Iv, p. 191. London, 1819. 



1^ Gabriel Soares de Souza : Tratado descriptivo do Brazil em 1587. Revista do Insti- 

 tute Hlstorlco do Brazil, vol. xv, p. 271. Rio de Janeiro, 1851. 



