PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 341 
and remain quiet. In an inconceivably short space of time, a party of ants 
crawled upon her frock, surrounded, covered the two jack-spaniards, and 
crawled down again to the floor, dragging off their prey, and doing the 
child no harm. 
“yom this room I went to the adjoining bed-chamber and dressing- 
room, and found them equally in possession of the chasseurs. I opened 
a large military chest full of linen, which had been much infested ; for 1 
was determined to take every advantage of such able hunters, I found 
the ants already inside ; I suppose they must have got in at some opening 
at the hinges. I pulled out the linens on the floor, and with them hun- 
dreds of cockroaches, not one of which escaped. 
«We now left the house, and went to the chambers built at a little 
distance ; but these also were in the same state. I next proceeded to 
open a store-room at the end of the other house for a place of retreat 
but, to get the key, I had to return to the under room, where the battle 
was now more hot than ever. The ants had commenced an attack upon 
the rats and mice, which, strange as it may appear, were no match for 
their apparently insignificant foes. They surrounded them as they had 
the insect tribe, covered them over, and dragged them off with a celerity 
and union of strength, that no one who has not watched such a scene 
cancomprehend, I did not see one rat or mouse escape, and I am sure 
[saw a score carried off during a very short period. We next tried the 
kitchen, for the store-room and boys’ pantry were already occupied ; but 
the kitchen was equally the field of battle, between rats, mice, cock- 
roaches, and ants killing them. A huckster negro came up selling cakes 5 
and seeing the uproar, and the family and servants standing out in the 
sun, he said, ‘ Ah, misses, you’ve got the blessing of God to-day, and a 
great blessing it is to get such a cleaning.’ 
“T think it was about ten when I first observed the ants; about 
twelve the battle was formidable ; soon after one o’clock the great strife 
began with the rats and mice; and about three the houses were cleared. 
Ina quarter of an hour more the ants began to decamp, and soon not one 
was to be seen within doors. But the grass round the house was full of 
them; and they seemed now feasting onthe remnants of their prey, 
which had been left on the road to their nests; and so the feasting con- 
tinued till about four o’clock, when the black birds, who had never been 
long absent from the calibash and poisdoux trees in the neighbourhood, 
darted down among them, and destroyed by millions those who were too 
sluggish to make good their retreat. By five o’clock the whole was over ; 
before sun-down, the negro-houses, were all cleared in the same way ; and 
they told me that they had seen the black birds hovering about the almond 
trees close to the negro-houses, as early as seven in the morning. I never 
saw those black birds before or since, and the negroes assured me that 
they weré neyer seen but at such times,’ 
I shall now relate to you some other portions of Myrmidonian History, 
which, though perhaps not so striking and wonderful as the preceding 
details, are not devoid of interest, and will serve to exemplify their in- 
credible diligence, labour, and ingenuity. 
oan Carmichael on the West Indies, quoted in Saturday Magazine, 1833, 
z3 
