Notices of New Hooks. 



8545 



agents in carrying out the different migrations of the colonies, which 

 are of vast importance to the dispersal and consequent prosperity of 

 the species. The successful debut of the winged males and females 

 depends likewise on the workers. It is amusing to see the activity 

 and excitement which reign in an ant's nest when the exodus of the 

 winged individuals is taking place. The workers clear the roads of exit, 

 and show the most lively interest in their departure, although it is 

 highly improbable that any of them will return to the same colony. 

 The swarming or exodus of the winged males and females of the Saiiba 

 ant takes place in January and February, that is at the commencement 

 of the rainy season. They come out in the evening in vast numbers, 

 causing quite a commotion in the streets and lanes. They are of 

 very large size, the female measuring no less than two and a quarter 

 inches in expanse of wing ; the male is not much more than half this 

 size. They are so eagerly preyed upon by insectivorous animals that 

 on the morning after their flight not an individual is to be seen, a few 

 impregnated females alone escaping the slaughter to found new 

 colonies."— (P. 23). 



Connected with the Saiiba ant is a curious animal that resides in its 

 formicarium : this is the Amphisbaena, an apod lizard blunt at both 

 ends, and supposed to travel with equal facility backwards or forwards, 

 a singular property, and one which has earned for it the enviable 

 celebrity of having two heads, one at each extremity. Its skin is 

 divided into small square departments or processes arranged in rings 

 round the body, much as in our English slow worm. Mr. Bates calls 

 these divisions scales, thus following the ordinary nomenclature, but 

 scales they certainly are not, since it is impossible to remove them, 

 and since also the cuticle which covers them is deciduous and shed 

 at the annual ecdysis. The eye is so small as to be scarcely per- 

 ceptible. These singular reptiles live entirely by day in the subterra- 

 nean cavities excavated by the Saiiba ant. The natives call it the 

 mother of the Saiibas, and believe it to be poisonous, although it is 

 perfectly harmless like the rest of its tribe. The ants treat it with 

 great affection, and the natives assert that if the Amphisbaena be 

 removed from the nest the ants will immediately desert it, an assertion 

 that must be received cum grano salis. The remains of Saiiba ants 

 were found in the stomach of an Amphisbaena opened by Mr. Bates, 

 so that the mother of ants seems to be possessed of the same unnatural 

 propensity as Saturn, and devours her own children. 



The notices of monkeys by our traveller are not numerous, neither 

 has he any of those monkey legends to relate which remind one of the 

 VOL. XXT. 2 H 



