ANTS. 
13 
four legs with as much freedom and muscular power as 
a warm-blooded quadruped. To catch such lively crea- 
tures was of course no easy matter, and all our attempts 
utterly failed ; but we soon got the little Negro and 
Indian boys to shoot them for us with their bows and 
arrows, and thus obtained many specimens. 
Next to the lizards, the ants cannot fail to be noticed. 
They startle you with the apparition of scraps of paper, 
dead leaves, and feathers, endued with locomotive powers ; 
processions engaged in some abstruse engineering ope- 
rations stretch across the public paths ; the flower you 
gather or the fruit you pluck is covered with them, and 
they spread over your hand in such swarms as to make 
you hastily drop your prize. At meals they make them- 
selves quite at home upon the table-cloth, in your plate, 
and in the sugar-basin, though not in such numbers as 
to offer any serious obstruction to your meal. In these 
situations, and in many others, you will find them, and 
in each situation it will be a distinct kind. Many plants 
have ants peculiar to them. Their nests are seen form- 
ing huge black masses, several feet in diameter, on the 
branches of trees. In paths in woods and gardens we 
• often see a gigantic black species wandering about singly 
or in pairs, measuring near an inch and a half long ; while 
some of the species that frequent houses are so small as 
to require a box-lid to fit very closely in order to keep 
them out. They are great enemies to any dead animal 
matter, especially insects and small birds. In drying 
the specimens of insects we procured, we found it neces- 
sary to hang up the boxes containing them to the roof 
of the verandah ; but even then a party got possession 
