4346 Notices of New Books. 



Mr. Wallace's paper on insects used as food is highly interesting. 

 After stating that insects afford the Indians some of their greatest 

 luxuries, he thus particularizes the species. 



" The first is a great-headed red ant, the CEcodoma cephalotes of 

 Latreille. This insect inhabits the whole Amazon district, and, I 

 believe, a great part of Brazil and Guiana, and is one of the most 

 destructive of the whole family. It frequents sandy districts, and 

 places where ' red earth ' is found, but is absent from the * black 

 earth,' or the rich alluvial soil of the Amazon. It forms its nests in 

 the woods and in gardens, turning up the soil in such large heaps as 

 to make one doubt whether so small an insect could have been the 

 workman. I have seen elevations of this kind twenty feet square and 

 a yard high, containing many tons of earth. These hillocks are rid- 

 dled with holes in every direction, and into them the ants may be 

 seen dragging little circular pieces of leaf, which they cut off from 

 particular trees which they prefer ; orange-trees and leguminous 

 shrubs suffer most from their ravages, and these they will sometimes 

 entirely strip of their leaves in a night or two. Young plants, too, of 

 every kind suffer very much, and cannot be grown in many places on 

 account of them. They remain in one locality a long time ; for on 

 my observing to a gentleman at a cattle-estate near Para, how remark- 

 ably the track of these ants was worn down across a pathway and 

 through grass, he informed me that he had observed them marching 

 along that very track for fifteen or twenty years. The insects which 

 do this are, of course, the neuters, which have tremendous jaws. 

 They often swarm in houses at night, crawling over the supper-table, 

 and carrying away fragments of bread and farina ; and should any 

 cloth or handkerchief be left on the ground, especially with anything 

 eatable in it, it will be found in the morning cut into semicircular 

 holes in every direction as neatly as if done with scissors. It is the 

 female of this destructive creature that furnishes the Indian with a 

 luxurious repast. At a certain season the insects come out of their 

 holes in such numbers, that they are caught by basketsfull. When 

 this takes place in the neighbourhood of an Indian village, all is stir 

 and excitement; the young men, women, and children go out to 

 catch sailbas with baskets and calabashes, which they soon fill ; for 

 though the female ants have wings, they are very sluggish, and sel- 

 dom or never fly. The part eaten is the abdomen, which is very rich 

 and fatty, from the mass of undeveloped eggs. They are eaten alive; 

 the insect being held by the head, as we hold a strawberry by its 

 stalk, and the abdomen being bitten off, the body, wings and legs are 



