NATURAL PRODUCTIONS. 
77 
if we could ; but though a small folk, they are neither 
few nor feeble. They are very fond of making their 
nests in the foundations of j’our house, picking out the 
mortar, and making for themselves convenient highways 
to the township. Hither they bring the leaves of your 
roses or your vine for the purpose of feeding their young. 
How, if you are determined to destroy them, you must 
:also determine to destroy the foundations of your house; 
and you have the assurance that though you disturb, 
root out, and destroy them in this place, one will 
escape and soon lay out a new colony in another 
part of the wall of your house. In the woods they 
excavate a quantity of earth from among the roots 
of trees, with main thoroughfares and bye-ways, with 
underground sewerage and all sanatory arrangements. 
Hoiling water, powder, fumigation with brimstone, pitch 
.and puddling, arsenic and other poisons have been tried, 
but have most signally failed. I’ossession is a great 
-deal in la.w, and tlie ants, once in possession of your 
garden, are not easily ejected. Should the nest happen 
do be away from v^all or tree, and you can puddle them, 
the work is not at all a trifle ; you have to dig down 
:several feet deep — some four feet, and as many in dia- 
meter — and then, when you come to the nest, and pour 
in the water and begin to puddle, the ants get infuriated, 
iiiid race about and cover the man wdm is attempting to 
bury them alive, and they draw blood wherever thej^ get 
^at the skin. Indeed, these ants are not attempted to be 
■destroyed, but are kept out of gardens by means of -water 
flowing TOund them in mason-work channels, or they 
are kept from single plants by peculiar shaped pitch 
vessels filled with water, across which the ants do not 
seem to care to venture. 
"Were it not for these ants, peculiar to Trinidad among 
the islands, many more fruits, flowers and vegetables 
Avoidd be grown than are now cultivated. 
The vegetables of Trinidad are equally numerous and 
varied as the fruits. We have plantains and yams of 
