









70 NOTES ON MEXICAN ANTS, 
tinue an active and daily surveillance over the manceuvres of 
these insects.” on 
It seems desirable to add the testimony of Mr. Bates as to 
the Gc. cephalotes, the common species of South America. 
“This insect, from its ubiquity, immense numbers, eternal 
industry, and its plundering. propensities, becomes one of 
the most important animals of Brazil. Its immense hosts — 
are unceasingly occupied in defoliating trees, and those most | 
relished by them are precisely the useful and cultivated | 
kinds. They have regular divisions of laborers, numbers — 
mounting the trees and cutting off the leaves in irregularly | 
rounded pieces the size of a shilling, another relay carrying © 
them off as they fall.” “The heavily laden fellows, as they 
came trooping in, all deposited their load in a heap close 
to the mound. About the mound itself were a vast number 
of workers of a smaller size. The very large-headed ones 









face, three burrows, each about an inch in diameter ; half @ 
foot downward, all three united in one tubular burrow about 
four inches in diameter. To the bottom of this I could not 
reach when I probed with a stick to the depth of four 
five feet. This tube was perfectly smooth and covered 
a vast number of workers of much smaller size than 
species. Besides the greatly enlarged size of the head, 
they have an ocellus in the middle of the forehead; t 
latter feature, added to their startling appearance from 
cavernous depths of the formicarium, gave them qu 
Cyclopean character.” 
Of another species, the Ge. sexdentata, Mr. Smith quo 
