NATURAL HISTORY OF THE BERMUDAS. 325 



articles of food, are keenly alive to the destructive habits of 

 the Ant. Nothing appears to escape their active search, 

 and whether it be meat, milk, sugar, honey, cake, or fruit, 

 the ingenuity of the owner has to be exercised in order to 

 save the same from utter destruction. 



The Ant appears to have a natural repugnance to 

 common whale oil, for which reason it is generally used 

 by the natives and others as a protection against these 

 annoying depredations. Store-room tables have their legs 

 placed in tin or leaden cups filled with oil ; shelves made to 

 hang from the ceiling have their iron supports passing 

 through tin funnels of the same ; and iron meat-hooks are 

 guarded in a similar manner. It is only by these means 

 that any article can be considered safe from these 

 marauders. 



Finding the Ants one morning disposed to attack a 

 bottle of honey, I placed the same (a common wine bottle) 

 in a soup plate on the sideboard, carefully filling the plate 

 with water. On returning to the room a short time after- 

 wards I found the bottle swarming with Ants, and on a 

 closer inspection, was greatly surprised to find a column of 

 those insects passing and re-passing on the surface of the 

 water between the rim of the plate and the bottle 

 of honey in the centre. This they appeared to do 

 with ease to themselves, merely wetting their feet in the 

 operation, or, in other words, absolutely walking on the 

 water. 



There is another peculiarity in the habits of the Ant 

 which deserves to be mentioned. If a couple of Snipe 

 have been shot in the marshes, and are destined as a 

 present to some friend, to save them from the Ants 

 during the night they are suspended by a single thread 

 from the upper part of an open window, and, notwith- 

 standing this precaution, they will be found covered with 



