NOTES ON MEXICAN ANTS. 67 
columns to a caravan of muleteers. The male and female 
~ bear the name of Zicatanas. In many places the natives 


«eat the abdomen of the females after having detached the 
thorax. 
“Itis specially in ‘the koci countries that the Ciico- 
domas build their enormous formicaries, so that one per- 
ceives them from afar by the projection which they form 
above the level of the soil, as well as by the absence of vege- 
tation in their immediate neighborhood. These nests occupy 
a surface of many square metres,* and their depth varies 
from one to two metres. Very many openings of a diameter 
of about one to three inches are contrived from the exte- 
rior, and conduct to the inner cavities which serve as store- 
houses for the eggs and larve. The central part of the nest 
forms a sort of foimel; designed for the drainage of water, 
from which, in a country where the periodical rains are often 
abundant, they could hardly escape without being entirely 
submerged, if they did not provide for it some outlet. 
“The system which reigns in the interior of these formi- 
caries is extreme. The polostín of vegetable debris brought 
in by the workers is at times sinsstdevable. But it is depos- 
ited there in such a manner as not to cause any inconven- 
ience to the inhabitants, nor impede their circulation. It is 
mostly leaves which are brought in from without, and it is 
the almost exclusive choice of this kind of vegetation which 
makes the @codoma a veritable scourge to agriculture. At 
each step and in almost every place in the elevated woods 
as in the plains, in desert places as well as in the neighbor- 
of f habitations, _ one meets numerous columns of these 
8, € wit ‘an admirable zeal in the transportation 
; en It ms even that the great law of the division 
not i | by, these little creatures, judging from 
‘aie Blowing observations which I have often had occasion 
to make. 
“The ground at the foot of the tree, where a troop of these 



+A metre is about thirty-nine (39.87) inches. 
