352 BLACK SOLDIER-ANTS. Chap. XXVTL 



circuit round the earth, and then all follow in that roundabout 

 way. When they approach the abode of the white ants, the 

 latter may be observed rushing about in a state of the greatest 

 perturbation. The black leaders, distinguished from the rest 

 by their greater size, especially in the region of the sting, 

 seize the white ants one by one, and inflict a sting which 

 renders them insensible but not dead. As the leaders toss 

 them on one side, the rank and file seize them and carry 

 them off. 



One morning I saw a party going forth on what has been 

 supposed to be a slave-hunting expedition. They came to a 

 stick, which, being enclosed in a white-ant gallery, contained 

 numbers of this insect ; but I was surprised to see the black 

 soldiers passing without touching it. I lifted up the stick 

 and laid it across the path in the middle of the black regiment, 

 to the consternation of the white ants, who scampered about 

 with great celerity, hiding themselves under the leaves. The 

 black marauders at first paid little attention to them, until 

 one of the leaders caught them, and, applying his sting, laid 

 them in an instant on one side in a state of coma ; the others 

 then promptly carried them 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 the 

 result of my own observation is that these black ruffians are a 

 grade lower than slave-masters, being actual cannibals. For, 

 in the first place, I have watched black ants hard at work 

 removing their eggs to a place of safety, and, though every 

 ant in the colony, to the number of 1260, seemed to be 

 employed in this laborious occupation, yet there was not a 

 white slave-ant among them. And, in the second place, I 

 have observed the cannibal propensities of the black ant ; for, 

 on one occasion, I met with a band of them returning each 

 with his captive, minus a leg which had been already 

 devoured. In addition to this, if any one examine 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. 

 Were it not for the black ant, the white ants would soon 

 overrun the country, so prolific are they. The fluid in the 

 stings of this species has an intensely acid tasta. 



