LEAF-CUTTING- ANTS. 
93 
into a large vault, the chamber where the dead were placed, 
together with the passage which led to it, being completely 
covered in. 
Habits Peculiar to Certain Species . 
Leaf-cutting Ants of the Amazon (GEcodoma cephal- 
otes). — The mode of working practised by these ants is 
thus described by Mr. Bates : — 
They mount a tree in multitudes. . . . Each one places 
itself on the surface of a leaf, and cuts with its sharp scissor- 
like jaws a nearly semicircular incision on the upper side ; it 
then takes the edge between its jaws, and by a sharp jerk 
detaches the piece. Sometimes they let the leaf drop to the 
ground, where a little heap accumulates, until carried off by 
another relay of workers ; but generally each marches off with 
the piece it has operated on, and as all take the same road to 
the colony, the path they follow becomes in a short time smooth 
and bare, looking like the impression of a cart-wheel through 
the herbage. 
Each ant carries its semicircular piece of leaf upright 
over its head, so that the home-returning train is rendered 
very conspicuous. Nearer observation shows that this 
home-returning or ladened train of workers keeps to one 
side of the road, while the outgoing or empty-handed 
train keeps to the other side ; so that on every road there 
is a double train of ants going in opposite directions. 
When the leaves arrive at the nest they are received by a 
smaller kind of workers, whose duty it is to cut up the 
pieces of leaf into still smaller fragments, whereby the 
leaves seem to be better fitted for the purpose to which, 
as we shall presently see, they are put. These smaller 
workers never take any part in the outdoor labours ; but 
they occasionally leave the nest, apparently for the sole 
purpose of obtaining air and exercise, for when they leave 
the nest they merely run about doing nothing, and fre- 
quently, as if in mere sport, mount some of the semi- 
circular pieces of leaf which the carrier ants are taking to 
the nest, and so get a ride home. 
From his continued observation of these ants, Bates con 
eludes— and his opinion has been corroborated by that 
