54 OUR SEARCH FOR A WILDERNESS. 



thus temporarily until the far-distant scouts should report 

 another shelter, when the whole community would shift to 

 the new home, farther along on the line of march. 



The army in which we were especially interested seemed 

 to be carrying on their hunting in a rough circle about the 

 temporary home, and perhaps this is a common habit. Cer- 

 tain ants apparently serve some function of direction or 

 means of communication, for they keep to one place for a 

 half hour at a time and twiddle their antenna with every ant 

 which approaches. 



It was when the hunting-ants discovered the nests of other 

 species of ants that warfare, true to its name, was waged. 

 One could watch as from a balloon, mimic Waterloos and 

 Gettysburgs, and sad to relate, in the case of inoffensive 

 species, plunder, murder, and abduction by the wholesale. 

 After studying the ways of these merciless creatures, we could 

 seldom walk through the quiet, sunlit jungle, with blossoming 

 orchids everywhere overhead and the songs of birds and 

 pleasant hum of insects in our ears, without thinking of the 

 tragedies without number ever going on around us. 



Used as we were only to the small lightning bugs of our 

 northern summer nights, the big luminous elater beetles {Pyro- 

 phorus sp.) were ever of interest. The two thoracic lights 

 are placed on the outer posterior edges and give out a pale 

 greenish glow of great intensity. We could easily see to read 

 and write by their light, and by placing a half dozen of these 

 insects in a glass we could use them instead of our electric 

 flash. 



When we examined them carefully we were surprised to 

 find that there was another area of illumination on the ab- 

 domen, below and just behind the insertion of the third pair 

 of legs. When fully illuminated this area was brilliant and 

 of a figure oo shape. The light however was radically dif- 

 ferent from that of the thorax, being yellowish, and candle- 



