Notes on Indian Ants. 
199 
Lohopelta chinensis, Mayr. 
This species is extremely common in Bangalore ; 
armies march about the parade grounds and the polo 
ground, squadrons scour the drains which line the well- 
kept Cantonment roads, an immense army corps oc- 
cupied a strong position in the big fernery of the Lall 
Bagh Gardens, the Station was literally garrisoned with 
Lohopelta, and I. have no hesitation in saying that, in 
my very first afternoon in Bangalore, I saw ten times 
as many of these ants as I had in my previous fifteen 
years' residence in India. 
With, such splendid and unlooked-for opportunities, I 
was naturally very keen on the question of Sound or 
Stridulation, so every marching regiment, great or 
small, was subjected to the closest examination. 
I poked and tickled them with a straw, with a stick ; 
I interrupted their line of march with a brick and with, 
my hand held edgeways ; I stooped down and listened 
with my hand to my ear, till the ants swarmed all over 
me and down my neck ; but not a sound, not a suspicion 
of a sound, could I get out of them. I tried similar 
experiments with an army in Mysore, and with one that 
frequented the compound of the Club, Trevandrum. but 
equally without success. 
But now I come to my one possible exception ; in 
the Museum Garden, Trevandrum, I met with, one 
Sunday evening (December 10th), a very fine army, 
which circled round and round the group of enclosures 
that contain wild pig and various species of deer. I 
repeated my regulation tactics of straws, sticks, and 
bricks, but with no better success. At last the army 
left the confines of the enclosure walls and headed into 
a dry drain or culvert, choked up with dry leaves; when 
well into this sunk way I interrupted the line of march, 
and then there was a wave of sound right along the line, a 
roar it might be called, perhaps, but a feu de 
joie by a long line of infantry better describes the 
impression left on my mind. This lasted only while 
the ants were travassing the leaf-choked way, for 
directly they struck the open path again no more 
sound could be obtained. Now the question is, did 
the ants produce this sound by any process of stridulat- 
ing, or was it merely the warning of the interruption 
