Chap. XIL] 



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 ail 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, Coecilia gluti- 

 noea l 9 a reptile resembling an enormous earthworm, 

 common in the Kandyan hills, of an inch in diameter, 



1 See ante, p. 317. 



