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ANIMAL LIFE IN THE TROPICAL FORESTS 
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my table, in my bed, and all over my body. Luckily, they 
were diurnal, so that on sweeping out my bed at night I 
could get on pretty well ; but during the day I could always 
feel some of them running over my body, and every now and 
then one would give me a sting so sharp as to make me jump 
and search instantly for the offender, who was usually found 
holding on tight with his jaws and thrusting in his sting with 
all his might. Another genus, Pheidole, consists of forest 
ants, living under rotten bark or in the ground, and very 
voracious. They are brown or blackish, and are remarkable 
for their great variety of size and form in the same species, 
the largest having enormous heads many times larger than 
their bodies, and being at least a hundred times as bulky as 
the smallest individuals. These great-headed ants are very 
sluggish and incapable of keeping up with the more active 
small workers, which often surround and drag them along as 
if they were wounded soldiers. It is difficult to see what use 
they can be in the colony, unless, as Mr. Bates suggests, they 
are mere baits to be attacked by insect-eating birds, and thus 
save their more useful companions. These ants devour grubs, 
white ants, and other soft and helpless insects, and seem to 
take the place of the foraging ants of America and driver 
ants of Africa, though they are far less numerous and less 
destructive. An allied genus, Solenopsis, consists of red ants, 
which, in the Moluccas, frequent houses, and are a most 
terrible pest. They form colonies underground, and work 
their way up through the floors, devouring everything eat- 
able. Their sting is excessively painful, and some of the 
species are hence called fire-ants. When a house is infested 
by them, all the tables and boxes must be supported on 
blocks of wood or stone placed in dishes of water, as even 
clothes not newly washed are attractive to them ; and woe to 
the poor fellow who puts on garments in the folds of which 
a dozen of these ants are lodged. It is very difficult to 
preserve bird skins or other specimens of natural history 
where these ants abound, as they gnaw away the skin round 
the eyes and the base of the bill, and if a specimen is laid 
down for even half an hour in an unprotected place it will 
be ruined. I remember once entering a native house to rest 
and eat my lunch ; and having a large tin collecting-box full 
