218 INSECTS 



these migrations will be to some extent appreciated 

 when I explain that this procession, which marches 

 some ten or twelve abreast, between stationary 

 double lines apparently of spectators three or four 

 deep, is often twenty or thirty yards or more in 

 length. Woe betide the tent, house, or other 

 habitation which may oppose the line of march ; 

 it is immediately overrun, and everything eatable 

 (and little comes amiss to the "Warrior") disappears 

 as though by magic. Should you be abed, you 

 will disappear also — through the door, tearing off 

 your clothing, desperately intent on removing the 

 murderous, apparently red-hot mandibles buried 

 torturingly in your tender skin. 1 have been in- 

 formed by credible sufferers that the " Warriors " 

 do not bite you immediately they come in contact 

 with your person ; they wait until you are almost 

 covered with them, when an ant of high rank, an 

 Adjutant-General, or somebody of that kind, gives 

 a signal, whereupon they all bite together — and 

 you awake. I have noticed in the forest country 

 another immense ant of dull, dingy black, fully an 

 inch in length. He belongs to a solitary variety, 

 and I do not think is particularly malevolent in his 

 mode of hfe. There are also many other ants 

 common to this part of Africa, some so minute 

 that you only begin to notice them when you find 

 them assembled in countless thousands in your 

 sugar-bowl or jam-pot. Another cross to bear in its 

 season is the winged variety, which in the early 

 rains, and usually early in the evening, comes forth 

 from some secret hiding place and streams in 

 through the window, surrounding your lamps in 



