80 



PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



selves on a table, where their legs did not communicate with 

 the floor. The ants did not crawl upon my person, but I was 

 now surrounded by them. Shortly after this, the walls of 

 the room became covered by them ; and next they began to 

 take possession of the tables and chairs. I now thought it 

 necessary to take refuge in an adjoining room, separated only 

 by a few ascending steps from the one we occupied, and this 

 was not accomplished without great care and generalship, for 

 had we trodden upon one we should have been summarily 

 punished. There were several ants on the step of the stair, 

 but they were not nearly so numerous as in the room we had 

 left ; but the upper room presented a singular spectacle, for 

 not only were the floor and the walls covered like the other 

 room, but the roof was covered also. 



" The open rafters of a West India house at all times aflbrd 

 shelter to a numerous tribe of insects, more particularly the 

 cockroach; but now their destruction was inevitable. The 

 chasseur-ants, as if trained for battle, ascended in regular, 

 thick files, to the rafters, and threw down the cockroaches to 

 their comrades on the floor, who as regularly marched off 

 with the dead bodies of cockroaches, dragging them away by 

 their united efforts with amazing rapidity. Either the cock- 

 roaches were stung to death on the rafters, or else the fall 

 killed them. The ants never stopped to devour their prey, 

 but conveyed it all to their storehouses. 



" The windward windows of this room were of glass, and 

 a battle now ensued between the ants and the jack-spaniards 

 on the panes of glass. The jack-spaniard may be called the 

 wasp of the West Indies ; it is twice as large as a British 

 wasp, and its sting is in proportion more painful : it builds 

 its nests in trees and old houses, and sometimes in the rafters 

 of a room. These jack-spaniards were not quite such easy 

 prey as the cockroaches had been, for they used their wings, 

 which not one cockroach had attempted to do. Two jack- 

 spaniards, hotly pursued on the window, alighted on the dress 

 of one of my children. I entreated her to sit still, and remain 

 quiet. In an inconceivably short space of time, a party of 

 ants crawled upon her frock, surrounded, covered the two 



