THE BASHIKOUAY— HOUSE-BUILDING ANTS. 



599 



had just resumed his garments when the main army came up, and he again took to 

 flight, never stopping until he had crossed a stream and taken refuge in a swamp 

 beyond. 



The Bashikouay can not bear the heat of the sun, and hence they are only found 

 in regions covered by forests. If while on a march they come to an open place, they 

 dig a tunnel three or four feet under ground, through which they pass to the jungles 

 on the opposite side. When they enter a village the inhabitants run for their lives. 

 In an incredibly short space of time every hut is cleared of vermin, and the only trace 

 left of the invaders is the bones of rats and mice, and the horny wing-cases of insects. 

 Nothing that breathes comes amiss to them. An antelope which had been shot by 

 Du Chaillu was picked to the bones in a few hours. The carcass of an elephant 

 would be cleared away as quickly as by a kraal of natives. They sometimes come 

 upon a huge snake, lying torpid and gorged with food. In this case all is soon over 

 with his serpentine majesty. But rats, mice, roaches, centipedes, scorpions, spiders, 

 and such small pests, are the special prey of the Bashikouay. A swarm of them will 

 kill a rat in two minutes, and devour him in about the same space of time. Upon the 

 whole, they are a blessing to the human race in Western Africa, by keeping down the 

 vermin, which would otherwise render the whole country uninhabitable. They will 

 not touch vegetable matter. One might almost suppose that the author of the Book 

 of Revelations had the Bashikouay in his mind when he speaks of the swarms of ''lo- 

 custs " which rose from the bottomless pit at the sounding of the fifth trumpet, to 

 whom *' it was commanded that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither 

 any green thing, neither any tree ; " but whose " torment was as the torment of a 

 scorpion when he striketh a man." Certain it is that the description fits the Bashi- 

 kouay, while it is altogether inapplicable to the creature which we call the " locust," 

 whose only food is green things, and who have no tormenting bite. 



The wonderful societies of the ants, their strength and perseverance, their unwearied 

 industry, their astonishing intelligence, are so well known, and have been so often and 

 so admirably described, that it would be trespassing on the patience of my readers 

 were I to enter into any lengthened details on the subject. And yet, the observations 

 of naturalists have chiefly been confined to the European species, while the economy 

 of the infinitely more numerous tropical ants, confined to countries or places hardly 

 ever visited, or even unknown to civilized man, remains an inexhaustible field for 

 future inquiry. 



The study of their various buildings alone, from the little we know of them, would 

 occupy a zealous entomologist for years. Here we have an American species that 

 forms its globular nest of the size of a large Dutch cheese, of small twigs artistically 

 interlaced ; here another, which constructs its dwelling of dried excrements, attaching 

 it to a thick branch ; while a third ( Formica hispinosa) uses the cotton of the Bom- 

 baceae for its building material, and through the chemical agency of its pungent secre- 

 tion converts it into a spongy substance. 



On the west coast of Borneo, Mr. Adams noticed two kinds of ants' nests — one 

 species of the size of a man's hand, adhering to the trunk of trees, resembling, when 

 cut through, a section of the lungs ; the other was composed of small withered bits of 

 sticks and leaves, heaped up in the axils of branches, somewhat in the form of flat- 



