Formicid^, INSECTS. (Ecodoma. 181 
“One day,” observes Mr. Darwin, “I fortunately 
witnessed a migration of F. sanguinea from one nest 
to another, and it was a most interesting spectacle 
to behold the masters carefully carrying their slaves 
in their jaws. Another day, my attention was struck 
by about a score of the slave-makers haunting the 
same spot, and evidently not in search of food ; they 
approached and were vigorously repulsed by an inde- 
pendent community of the slave species {F. fusca); 
sometimes, as many as three of these ants clinging to 
the legs of the slave-making F. sanguinea. The latter 
ruthlessly killed their small opponents, and carried 
their dead bodies as food to their nest, twenty-nine 
yards distant ; but they were prevented from getting 
any pupae to rear as slaves. I then dug up a small 
parcel of the pupae of F. fusca from another nest, and 
put them down on a bare spot near the place of com- 
bat ; they were eagerly seized and carried off by the 
tyrants, who perhaps fancied that, after all, they had 
been victorious in their late combat.” These ants 
sometimes, though rarely, capture a little yellow ant 
called Formica flava by naturalists. This yellow ant 
is very courageous, and attacks the F. sanguinea. 
Some naturalists have doubted the existence of an 
ant that “ lays up a store for winter ;” but I feel sure 
that many ants will be found to have this habit in 
countries where rain, and not cold, marks the winter. 
Colonel Sykes, for instance, found the Atta providens 
collecting millet seed at Poonah. 
Mr. Alfred Wallace who, with Mr. Bates, explored 
the shores of the Amazon, could not fail to be struck 
with the numerous species of ants, and with their habits 
and universality. In his “ Travels on the Amazon ” 
(p. 13), he thus writes. — The ants “startle you with 
the apparition of scraps of paper, dead leaves, and 
feathers, endued with locomotive powers ; proces- 
sions, engaged in some abstruse engineering operations, 
stretch across the public paths; the flowers 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 
themselves 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.” Mr. Wallace records that “in these and similar 
situations ants are to be found, and distinct species in 
each situation. As you travel in the forests, you may 
see the nests of ants on the branches of the trees, 
some of them forming large black masses several feet 
in diameter. A gigantic black species, nearly an inch 
and a half in length, wanders along paths in the woods 
and gardens, while there are species so small that they 
are kept with great difficulty out of boxes and pans, 
unless the lids fit very closely; any dead animal 
matter, such as small birds or insects, is sure to attract 
them.” Messrs. Bates and Wallace, when drying the 
insects they had caught, found it necessary to hang 
up the boxes containing them to the roof of the veran- 
dah ; but even then thej”^ found that these inquisitorial 
pests visited the boxes, by using the string as a ladder. 
By soaking the string well in Andiroba oil, which is 
very bitter, these naturalists ever after suspended 
their insects, and preserved them from the ants. 
“ Among the curious things we meet with in the 
woods, are large heaps of earth and sand, sometimes 
by the road-side, and sometimes extending quite across 
the path, making the pedestrian ascend and descend 
(a pleasing variety in this flat country), and looking 
just as if some ‘ Para and Peru direct Railway Com- 
pany’ had commenced operations. These mounds 
are often thirty or forty feet long, by ten or fifteen 
wide, and about three or four feet high ; but instead 
of being the work of a lot of railway labourers, we 
find it is all due to the industry of a native insect, the 
much- dreaded Sauba ant. This insect is of a light- 
red colour, about the size of our largest English species, 
the wood-ant, but with much more powerful jaws. 
It does great injury to young trees, and will sometimes 
strip them of their leaves in a single night. We often 
see, hurrying across the pathways, rows of small green 
leaves; these are the Saubas, each with a piece of 
leaf cut as smoothly as with scissors, and completely 
hiding the body from sight. The orange tree is very 
subject to their attacks.” 
Mr. Wallace adds, that some places are so infested 
with them, that it is useless planting anything. Their 
numbers are so immense, that it is impossible to 
destroy them, as may readily be seen by the great 
quantities of earth they remove. 
The Rev. Hamlet Clark, who visited Brazil in 1857, 
thus writes of the ants — “ The ants are very numer- 
ous and most interesting ; some species construct 
covered galleries among the branches of trees ; others 
burrow (this is the genus (Ecodoma), f for miles, six 
or ten feet below the surface of the ground ! some are 
carnivorous, and seem to live principally on insects ; 
others are vegetarians ; one species in this neighbour- 
hood is welcomed as a friend to the housekeeper, for 
when it marches through a house not a single cock 
roach or spider is left behind it alive ; at Constancia 
and other localities there is a species which, in a 
single night, will strip a large tree of every leaf.” The 
next ant he refers to may be a species of (Ecodoma. | 
“ In the forests on the Corcovado range, we heard of — 
but could not see — an ant which constructs its nest above 
ground five or eight feet high ; the sides of these nests 
are constructed of clay, worked up by mastication, so 
that, after a few years, they obtain the consistency of 
porous stone. In this state they have a commercial 
value ; they are cut up into slabs or blocks, and used 
for the purpose of lining ovens.” 
Tschudi describes the swarms of a Peruvian ant 
which the natives call naui-lmacan-sisi, which means, 
“ the ant which brings tears to the eyes by its numer- 
ous stings.” § These creatures appear suddenly in 
trains of countless myriads, and proceed forward in 
a strait direction, without stopping. The small and 
the weak are placed in the centre, while the large 
and the strong flank the army, and look out for prey. 
These swarms are called by the Peruvians C/iacus. 
Like the Driver ants of Western Africa, they sometimes 
enter a hut and clear it of all insects, reptiles, and 
* Zoologist, May 1857, p. 5564. 
f See Smith in Journal of Entomology, vol. i., p. 66; 1860. 
+ Ibid. 
§ Tschudi’s Travels in Peru, p. 438. 
