BENEFICIAL ANTS 461 



for if even a rat or snake be caught napping they will soon pick his bones.' 

 They had been in the house but a very little while when we heard a great 

 commotion inside the walls, chiefly of mice careering madly about and utter- 

 ing terrified squeals ; and the ants were allowed to remain thus and hunt over 

 the house at will for three days and nights, when, having exhausted their 

 legitimate game, they began to be troublesome in the kitchen and on the dinner 

 table. 'Now,' said Dona Juanita, 'is the time for the water cure,' and she set 

 her maids to sprinkle water over the visitors, who at once took the hint, gath- 

 ered up their scattered squadrons, reformed in column, and resumed their 

 march. Whenever their inquisitions became troublesome to myself during the 

 three days, I took the liberty to scatter a few suggestive drops among them, 

 and it always sufficed to make them turn aside ; but any attempt at a forcible 

 ejectment they were sure to resent with tooth and nail, and their bite and 

 sting were rather formidable, for they were large and lusty ants. For weeks 

 afterwards the squeaking of a mouse and the whirring of a cockroach were 

 sounds unheard in that house." (Footnote.) 



"The ants called Carniceras, or butchers, in Maynais are probably of a tribe 

 distinct from the foragers, for they are burrowing ants, and are said to prefer 

 the flesh of human carcasses to any other food. Padre Velasco, in his History 

 of Quito, assures us that they will make a perfect skeleton of a corpse the 

 very day it is buried, and that they devour any disabled animal, however 

 large, they find in the forest." 



Thomas Belt has a good deal on the swarms of ants in Central Amer- 

 ica. The following extract is from his "Naturalist in Nicaragua," page 17 : 



"One of the smaller species (Eciton predator) used occasionally to visit our 

 house and swarm over the floors and walls, searching every cranny and driv- 

 ing out the cockroaches and spiders, many of which were caught, pulled, bitten 

 to pieces, and carried off. The individuals of this species were of various 

 sizes, the smallest measuring one and a quarter lines and the largest three 

 lines, or a quarter of an inch. 



"I saw many armies of this, or a closely allied species, in the forest. My 

 attention was generally first called to them by the twittering of some small 

 birds, belonging to several different species, that follow the ants in the woods. 

 On approaching, a dense body of the ants, three or four yards wide, and so 

 numerous as to blacken the ground, would be seen moving rapidly in one 

 direction, examining every cranny and underneath every fallen leaf. On the 

 flanks and in advance of the main body smaller columns would be pushed 

 out. These smaller columns would generally first flush the cockroaches, grass- 

 hoppers, and spiders. The pursued insects would rapidly make off, but many 

 in their confusion and terror would bound right into the midst of the main 

 body of ants." 



Bates has the following regarding the Ecitons (page 354) : 



"One or other of them is sure to be met with in a woodland ramble, and it 

 is to them, probably, that the stories we read in books on South Ameuica 

 apply of ants clearing houses of vermin, although I heard of no instance of 



