538 BLACK SOLDIER- ANTS. Chap. XXVII. 



without touching it. I lifted up the stick and broke a portion of 

 the gallery, and then laid it across the path in the middle of the 

 black regiment. The white ants, when uncovered, scampered 

 about with great celerity, hiding themselves under the leaves, but 

 attracted little attention from the black marauders, till one of the 

 leaders caught them, and applying Ins sting, laid them in an 

 instant on one side in a state of coma ; the others then promptly 

 seized them and rushed off. On first observing these marauding 

 insects at Kolobeng, I had the idea, imbibed from a work of no less 

 authority than Brougham's Paley, that they seized the white ants 

 in order to make them slaves ; but having rescued a number of 

 captives, I placed them aside, and found that they never recovered 

 from the state of insensibility into winch they had been thrown by 

 the leaders. I supposed then that the insensibility had been caused 

 by the soldiers holding the necks of the white ants too tightly 

 with their mandibles, as that is the way they seize them ; but even 

 the pupae which I took from the soldier ants, though placed in a 

 favourable temperature, never became developed. In addition to 

 tins, if any one examines the orifice by which the black ant enters 

 his barracks, he will always find a little heap of hard heads and 

 legs of the white ants, showing that these black ruffians are a grade 

 lower than slave-stealers, being actually cannibals. Elsewhere, I 

 have seen a body of them removing their eggs from a place in 

 winch they were likely to be flooded by the rains ; I calculated 

 their numbers to be 1260 ; they carried then- eggs a certain 

 distance, then laid them down, when others took them and carried 

 them further on. Every ant in the colony seemed to be employed 

 in tins laborious occupation, yet there was not a white slave-ant 

 among them. One cold morning, I observed a band of another 

 species of black ant, returning each with a captive : there could be 

 no doubt of then- cannibal propensities, for the "brutal soldiery" 

 had already deprived the white ants of their legs. The fluid in 

 the stings of this species, is of an intensely acid taste. 



I had often noticed the stupefaction produced by the injection 

 of a fluid from the sting of certain insects before. It is particu- 

 larly observable in a hynienopterous insect called the "plasterer" 

 (Pelopceas Echloni), which in its habits resembles somewhat the 

 mason-bee. It is about an inch and a quarter in length, jet black 

 in colour, and may be observed coming into houses, carrying in 



