ANTS. 



87 



is, perhaps, not yet quite iinderstood. Mr. Bates found 

 that the x^mazon species used them to thatch the domes 

 of earth covering the entrances to their subterranean 

 galleries, the pieces of leaf being carefully covered and 

 kept in position by a thin layer of grains of earth. In 

 Nicaragua Mr. Belt found the underground cells full of 

 a brown flocculent matter, which he considers to be the 

 gnawed leaves connected by a delicate fungus which 

 ramifies through the mass and which serves as food for 

 the larvae ; and he believes that the leaves are really 

 gathered as manure-heaps to favour the growth of this 

 fungus ! 



When they enter houses, which they often do at 

 night, the Salibas are very destructive. Once, when 

 travelling on the Rio Negro, I had bought about a peck 

 of rice, which was tied up in a large cotton handkerchief 

 and placed on a bench in a native house where we were 

 spending the night. The next morning we found about 

 half the rice on the floor, the remainder having been 

 carried away by the ants ; and the empty handkerchief 

 was still on the bench, but with hundreds of neat cuts in 

 it reducing it to a kind of sieve. ^ 



The foraging ants of the genus Eciton are another 

 remarkable group, especially abundant in the equatorial 

 forests of America. They are true hunters, and seem 

 to be continually roaming about the forests in great 

 bands in search of insect prey. They especially devour 

 maggots, caterpillars, white ants, cockroaches, and other 

 soft insects ; and their bands are always accompanied by 



' For a full and most interesting description of the habits and instincts of 

 this ant, see Bates' Naturalist on the Amazons^ 2nd edit. pp. 11-18; and 

 Belt's Naturalist in Nicaragua, pp. 71-84. 



