Chap. XII.] 
ANTS. 
421 
sion of the ants for sugar, and their wonderful faculty 
of discovering it, that the smallest particle of a sub- 
stance containing it is quickly covered with them, 
though placed in the least conspicuous position, where 
not a single one may have been visible a moment 
before. But it is not sweet substances alone that they 
attack; no animal or vegetable matter comes amiss to 
them ; no aperture appears too small to admit them ; 
it is necessary to place everything which it may be de- 
sirable to keep free from their invasion, under the 
closest cover, or on tables with cups of water under 
every foot. As scavengers, they are invaluable ; and as 
ants never sleep, but work without cessation during the 
night as well as by day, every particle of decaying 
vegetable or putrid animal matter is removed with in- 
conceiveable speed and certainty. In collecting shells, 
I have been able to turn this propensity to good 
account ; by placing them within their reach, the ants 
in a few days removed every vestige of the mollusc 
from the innermost and otherwise inaccessible whorls ; 
thus avoiding all risk of injuring the enamel by any 
mechanical process. 
But the assaults of the ants are not confined to dead 
animals alone, they attack equally such small insects as 
they can overcome, or find disabled by accidents or 
wounds ; and it is not unusual to see some hundreds of 
them surrounding a maimed beetle, or a bruised cock- 
roach, and hurrying it along in spite of its struggles. I 
have, on more than one occasion, seen a contest between 
them and one of the viscous ophidians, Ccecilia gluti- 
7iosa\ a reptile resembling an enormous earthworm, 
common in the Kandyan hills, of an inch in diameter, 
1 See ante, p. 317. 
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