460 J. C. BRANNER — GEOLOGIC WORK OF ANTS 



ants swarm through one's house or rooms they are certainly annoying, 

 but they soon disappear, and one feels that he has been relieved to a con- 

 siderable extent from the cockroaches and other more offensive and 

 serious plagues. 



Many writers have described the operations of these ants, but the fol- 

 lowing, quoted from Dr. Richard Spruce, will give a clear idea of these 

 operations -.^^ 



"Ecitons, or foraging ants (called Cazadoras in Peru), seem to be true wan- 

 dering hordes, without a settled habitation, for a certain number of them may 

 always be seen carrying pupse, apparently of their own species; but they 

 sojourn sometimes for several days whenever they come upon suitable food 

 and lodging. 



"The first time I saw a house invaded by Cazadoras was in November, 1855, 

 on the forest slope of Mount Campana, in the eastern Peruvian Andes. I had 

 taken up my abode in a solitary Indian hut, at a height of 3,000 feet, for the 

 sake of devoting a month to the exploration of that interesting mountain. 

 The walls of the hut were merely a single row of strips of palm trees, with 

 spaces between them wide enough to admit larger animals than ants. One 

 morning soon after sunrise the hut was suddenly filled with large blackish 

 ants, which ran nimbly about and tried their teeth on everything. My charqui 

 proved too tough for them ; but they made short work of a bunch of ripe plan- 

 tains, and rooted out cockroaches, spiders, and other such like denizens of a 

 forest hut. So long as they were left unmolested they avoided the human 

 inhabitants ; but when I attempted to brush them away they fell on me by 

 hundreds and bit and stung fiercely. I asked the Indian's wife if we had not 

 better turn out a while and leave them to their diversions. 'Do they annoy 

 you?' said she, 'Why, you see it is impossible for one to work with the ants 

 running over everything,' replied I. Whereupon she filled a calabash with 

 cold water, and, going to the corner of the hut where the ants still continued 

 to stream in, she devoutly crossed herself, muttered some invocation or exor- 

 cism, and sprinkled the water gently over them. Then walking quietly round 

 and round the hut, she continued her aspersion on the marauders, and thereby 

 literally so damped their ardour that they began to beat a retreat, and in ten 

 minutes not an ant w^as to be seen. 



"Some years afterwards I was residing in a farm-house on the River Daule, 

 near Guayaquil, when I witnessed a similar invasion. The house was large, 

 of two stories, and built chiefly of bamboo-cane, the walls being merely an 

 outer and an inner layer of cane, without plaster inside or out, so that they 

 harboured vast numbers of cockroaches, scorpions, rats, mice, bats, and even 

 snakes, although the latter abode chiefly in the roof. Notwithstanding the 

 size of the house, every room was speedily filled with the ants. The good lady 

 hastened to fasten up her fresh meat, fish, sugar, etc., in safes inaccessible 

 even to the ants, and I was prompt to impart my experience of the eflicacy of 

 baptism by water in ridding a house of such pests. 'Oh !' said she, laughingly, 

 'we know all that ; but let them first have time to clear the house of vermin. 



23 Richard Spruce : Notes of a botanist on the Amazon and Andes, vol. ii, pp. 371-373. 

 London, 1908. 



