ECONOMY OF LABOUR. 237 
S'accomplit sous mes yeux, et l’arbre resta entiérement 
dépouillé.’ 
Bates! gives an apparently similar, but really very 
different account. ‘The Saiiba ants,’ he says, ‘ mount 
the tree in multitudes, the individuals being all 
worker-minors. Each one places itself on the surface 
of a leaf, and cuts with its sharp scissor-like jaws a 
nearly semivircular incision on the upper side; it then 
takes the edge between its jaws, and by a sharp jerk 
detaches the piece. Sometimes they let the leaf drop to 
the ground, where a little heapaccumulates, until carried 
off by another relay of workers; but, generally, each 
marches off with the piece it has operated upon.’ 
Dr. Kerner recounts? the following story communi- 
cated to him by Dr. Gredler of Botzen :— 
‘One of his colleagues at Innsbriick, says that 
gentleman, had for months been in the habit of sprink- 
ling pounded sugar on the sill of his window, for a 
train of ants, which passed in constant procession from 
the garden to the window. One day, he took it into 
his head to put the pounded sugar into a_ vessel, 
which he fastened with a string to the transom of the 
window; and, in order that his long-petted insects 
might have information of the supply suspended above, 
a number of the same set of ants were placed with the 
sugar in the vessel. These busy creatures forthwith 
1 Naturalist on the Amazons, vol. i. p. 26. 
* Flowers and their Unbidden Guests, Dr. A. Kerner. Trans. by 
W. Ogle, 1878, p. 21. 
