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ANIMAL LIFE IN THE TROPICAL FORESTS 
283 
and the ants ; those varieties of trees which were in any 
way distasteful or unsuitable escaping destruction, while the 
ants were becoming slowly adapted to attack new trees. 
Thus in time the great majority of native trees have acquired 
some protection against the ants, while foreign trees, not 
having been so modified, are more likely to be suitable for 
their purposes. Mr. Belt carried on war against them for 
four years to protect his garden in Nicaragua, and found 
that carbolic acid and corrosive sublimate were most effectual 
in destroying or driving them away. 
The use to which the ants put the immense quantities of 
leaves they carry away has been a great puzzle, and is, per- 
haps, not yet quite understood. Mr. Bates found that the 
Amazon species used them to thatch the domes of earth cover- 
ing the entrances to their subterranean galleries, the pieces of 
leaf being carefully covered and kept in position by a thin layer 
of grains of earth. In Nicaragua Mr. Belt found the under- 
ground cells full of a brown floeculent matter, which he con- 
siders to be the gnawed leaves connected by a delicate fungus 
which ramifies through the mass and which serves as food for 
the larvae ; and he believes that the leaves are really gathered 
as manure-heaps to favour the growth of this fungus ! 
When they enter houses, which they often do at night, 
the Saubas are very destructive. Once, when travelling on 
the Rio Negro, I had bought about a peck of rice, which was 
tied up in a large cotton handkerchief and placed on a bench 
in a native house where we were spending the night. The 
next morning we found about half the rice on the floor, the 
remainder having been carried away by the ants ; and the 
empty handkerchief was still on the bench, but with hundreds 
of neat cuts in it reducing it to a kind of sieve . 1 
The foraging ants of the genus Eciton are another remark- 
able group, especially abundant in the equatorial forests of 
America. They are true hunters, and seem to be continually 
roaming about the forests in great bands in search of insect 
prey. They especially devour maggots, caterpillars, white 
ants, cockroaches, and other soft insects ; and their bands 
1 For a full and most interesting description of tlie habits and instincts of 
this ant, see Bates’ Naturalist on the River Amazons, 2d ed., pp. 11-18 ; 
and Belt’s Naturalist in Nicaragua, pp. 71-84. 
