ANTS IN INDIA AND THE EAST. 
47 
India, while Mr. Nietner, of Ceylon, sent to the Berlin Museum 
no fewer than seventy species, collected in that island alone. It 
will suffice for this short paper if I refer only to the two ants 
already mentioned. 
The “ Karanga” is a red, or rather reddish-brown ant, usually 
of nearly three-quarters of an inch in length. They live in com- 
paratively small communities, and form their nests upon dwarf 
trees and shrubs : this they contrive to do with much skill 
by fastening small boughs and leaves together, cementing the 
edges with a glutinous substance which they secrete. In the 
Straits of Malacca I have found them, not infrequently, in the 
“soursop” tree, a plant of the custard-apple order. One has 
only to approach a tree where a nest of these ants may be, when, 
in a trice, there is a sudden movement all through the little 
colony, and I have often wondered how the signal of “ danger 
about ” could be so rapidly conveyed, even to those at some 
distance away. It has been stated that amongst the many 
powers possessed by these insects generally, they have the 
faculty of communicating their ideas to one another; and it must 
certainly appear that at all events with this species there is a 
special instinct which enables them in a moment to be one and 
all conscious of a note of warning, which, though inaudible to 
our ears, is undoubtedly perceptible to them by some means or 
another. Most of us have seen how chickens recognise the 
approach overhead of a kite or other bird of prey, and, with a 
cry of distress, run for shelter; and that is the sort of idea which 
strikes one upon seeing the sudden alarm of these ants, but with 
them it is not to escape but to be prepared for attack : they are 
quite fearless, and if they bite it is with great severity, so much 
so that they have sometimes been known to leave their head in 
the wound they inflict, much as an irritated bee will leave its 
sting. Even the natives of the country have a dread of them, 
and many decline to ascend small creeks in their “ dugouts” if 
they are aware that any of these insects abound there. Mrs. 
Pryer, I see, confirms my statement in her recent work, A Decade 
in Borneo. 
There is another ant, very similar to the “ Karanga,” but 
not so formidable, which is known by the Malays as the 
“ Klang Kea.” It builds its nest, too, much in the same way. 
There is also, I may add, a green ant peculiar to the Malay 
Archipelago, of similar habits and size, which Dr. Balfour 
classifies under the name of CEcophylla smaragdina. 
But I must pass on to give some particulars about the black 
ant of Northern India from the account given me by Mr. Thomas 
Barlow. The “ Lamba Tang ” is so called by the natives in the 
Punjab to denote its “long-leggedness”; the word “Lamba” 
literally meaning “ long.” It builds its nest underground, and 
exists in very large communities, which may often be observed 
marching in complete order from place to place, and, as the 
natives say, they seem never to forget the route to their holes. 
