ANT STRUCTURES - 463 



In the early history of the country, however, when the native Indians 

 were much more abundant than they are now, the custom appears to 

 have been common. Gabriel Soares de Souza, after living 16 years in 

 Bahia, wrote as follows in 1587 :^* 



"There are in this same country other ants which the Indians call igans, and 

 which have bodies the size and color of an Alicante raisin . . . which 

 live on the leaves of trees and worms and other small animals they find on the 

 ground ; these ants the Indians eat roasted over the fire, and they are greatly 

 enjoj^ed ; and some white men who live amongst them and the half-breeds re- 

 gard them as good food, and boast of it as being very savory ; . . . and 

 when roasted they are white on the inside." 



Orton^^ says the sauhas "are eaten by the Eio Negro Indians, and es- 

 teemed a luxury, while the Tapajos tribes use them to season their man- 

 dioca sauce.'' 



STRUCTURES ABOVE GROUND 



Origin of the structures. — The word "nests" frequently applied to the 

 superficial structures of ants should not be understood to mean nests in 

 tbe ordinary signification of the word. These structures sometimes con- 

 tain the queens, eggs, and larvae, but at other times these are kept in 

 excavations below the surface. 



The mounds made by the true ants all begin as small funnel-shaped 

 ridges around the excavations started by individual females. The large 

 mounds are the results of the work of many generations and of a vast 

 number of individuals. 



Without going into any detailed description of the habits of the ants, 

 it is wortli while to give, for those unfamiliar with their habits, a general 

 idea of the methods followed by these ants in establishing new colonies 

 and in increasing them. When the swarming or mating season of the 

 sauha ants comes, the young females leave their homes and fly away, 

 'lliey seem to fly about very much at random — at least, I have rarely 

 seen them going in any particular direction — and when they have been 

 seen going together it was apparently due to the direction of the wind or 

 the position of the sun at the time, rather than to any definite purpose 

 on their part. 



When the female alights after a flight of only a few minutes, she 

 breaks off her wings and at once falls to work at excavating a burrow. 

 All kinds of places are selected for these burrows. It does not appear 

 that the selection is deliberate, but it seems to be determined by the acci- 



' 24 Gabriel Soares de Souza : Tratado descriptivo do Brazil em 1587. Revist. Inst. Hist, 

 do Brazil, vol. xiv, pp. 273-274. Rio de Janeiro, 1851. 



25 .Tames Orton : The Andes and the Amazon, 3d ed., p. 301. New York, 1876. 



