ANTS. 



85 



a dozen of these ants are lodged. It is very difficult to 

 preserve bird skins or other specimens of natural history 

 where these ants abound, as they gnaw aw^ay the skin 

 round the eyes and the base of the bill ; and if a 

 specimen is laid down for even half an hour in an un- 

 protected place it will be ruined. I remember once 

 entering a native house to rest and eat my lunch ; and 

 having a large tin collecting box full of rare butterflies 

 and other insects, I laid it down on the bench by my 

 side. On leaving the house I noticed some ants on it, 

 and on opening the box found only a mass of detached 

 wings and bodies, the latter in process of being devoured 

 by hundreds of fire- ants. 



The celebrated Saiiba ant of America {CEcodoma 

 cephalotes) is allied to the preceding, but is even more 

 destructive, thougli it seems to confine itself to vegetable 

 products. It forms extensive underground galleries, and 

 the earth brought up is deposited on the surface, forming 

 huge mounds sometimes thirty or forty yards in circum- 

 ference, and from one to three feet high. On first seeing 

 these vast deposits of red or yellow earth in the woods 

 near Para, it was hardly possible to believe they were 

 not the work of man, or at least of some l^urrowing 

 animal. In these underground caves the ants store 

 up large quantities of leaves, which they obtain from 

 living trees. They gnaw out circular pieces and carry 

 them away along regular paths a few inches wide, form- 

 ing a stream of apparently animated leaves. The great 

 extent of the subterranean workings of these ants is no 

 doubt due in part to their permanence in one spot, so 

 that when portions of the galleries fall in or are other- 

 wise rendered useless, they are extended in another 



