14 
In another report this question of the introduction of the 
"black ants is fully discussed and from different documents in 
my possession it is abundantly proved that they are indigenous. 
They were described in 1861 by Smith and found later at Kew in 
a consignment of plants received from various Colonies. Professor 
Stanley Gardiner, F. B. S., found them at Farquhar Island in 
1905 and Mr Hugh Scott the Entomologist from Cambridge 
who accompanied Professor Gardiner in the latter’s second 
scientific expedition to Seychelles in 1908 collected specimens 
of the ants in question (the type and the sub-species) on the 
summits of Mahe and Silhouette Islands. (Transactions of the 
Linnean Society of London ZoJ. Yol. XII Sj Vol XY). Professor 
Forel the great authority on ants also described them as far 
back as 1892 as occurring in Madagascar and neighbourhood. 
It is however true that these ants did not become house¬ 
hold pests nearly everywhere in Victoria until after 1906 and 
this fact can only be accounted for by the development of scale 
insects, which, after the droughts of 1904, 1905, obtained a 
stronghold and caused the destruction of most of the citrus, 
hibiscus and Liberian coffee plants growing in the Colony. The 
favourite food of ants being the excretion of scale insects which 
in their turn are protected from their parasites by the ants, it 
is natural to think that the development of scale insects was 
accompanied by an invasion of ants. One can say that in 
Mahe the spread of the ant which in some cases was found to 
cover about a mile in one year is entirely due to the invasion of 
scale insects which attacked one tree after another from 1904 
onwards ; yarious species of scale insects attacking various 
groups of plants from one estate to another, the ants easily 
detecting and following the track of the scale insects. 
The rapidity with which these ants form a colony is as¬ 
tounding. They nest almost everywhere in laboratory test 
tubes, burettes, pipettes &c., in drawers, in rolls of paper, in 
bamboo pots (a favourite spot) in piles of wood, in compost 
heaps, in straw packing materials of all sorts, in rough bark, 
in crevices and holes and even between leaves of a great variety 
of plants where the nest is sheltered by accumulated dust and 
debris. Straw of all sort is also a favourite spot; even the dead 
leaves of lemon grasses, scittaminae &c., growing in clumps, 
are locations very often selected. 
Xo place is however more often selected than the sheathing- 
leaves of the coconut, banana and sugar cane. Even on these 
places they suffer much from heavy showers of rain which cause 
a great number of them to be drowned. The dead bodies are 
picked up the next morning and heaped together along side 
roads by the workers, a habit which cause many persons to 
think erroneously that these ants often die in thousands 
through contagious diseases. 
These ants are kept under control by natural agencies such 
as heavy showers. I have often observed them on banana 
plants during a heavy storm and seen how cunningly they 
avoid the water which runs down the stem and enters their 
nest, but their efforts are in vain when the heavy shower lasts 
more than one hour. The greatest damage done by ants being 
the increase which they cause in the propagation of scale in¬ 
sects by sheltering and protecting the latter from their natural 
enemies, one can understand that the destruction of scale in¬ 
sects by spraying materially assists in the destruction of ants 
by limiting their distribution ; but as the workers in search of 
food form only a small percentage of the insects of the same 
form living in the nest, one can see at once that by destroying 
workers only, no important results are achieved. The eggs are 
laid by the queens only, and therefore the number of workers 
produced is instantly being increased and surely in much 
greater proportion than the number of foraging workers that 
can be destroyed by repellents, such as Arsenite of Soda hi 
weak solution and tapes soaked in corrosive sublimate. 
If one considers that no single estate is free from scale in¬ 
fested plants, one can imagine the rapidity with which the ants 
spread, in spite of their so-called social habits which in most 
cases cause them to spread slowly under normal conditions. 
With the exception of -North Island, Marianne, Aride 
Island in the Mahe group ; Aldabra, Astove, Cosmoledo 
in the Aldabra group, and the Amirantes, all the other Islands 
