ZOOLOGY 
375 
travellers as “ hornets.” I question whether any hornet is found in Central 
Africa, but the hornet is, after all, only one amongst many wasps. 
Regarding ants: there are the tiny ones which in the more low-lying 
districts infest the larder and crawl into the sugar; there are the red tree ants 
that bite venomously ; and there is a black species living in marshy localities 
which has formidable mandibles and whose puncture of the skin is like a 
nip of red-hot iron. This black ant is said to sally out at times to attack the 
termites. It is often met marching in armies of thousands which make a 
perceptible rustling as they cross a road by a track which they have actually 
worn through the soil. The workers pass along in the middle whilst the large- 
jawed soldiers are thickly clustered on either side. If the progress of this 
army should be arrested the soldiers scour the soil seeking for the enemy, and 
if the human observer remained long in the vicinity these dauntless insects 
would have climbed up his legs and have fixed their jaws into his flesh with 
such tenacity that the head is often left in the wound when the body is pulled 
off. At times these warrior ants will enter a dwelling and force the human 
inhabitants to evacuate. In their passage through the house they destroy all 
cockroaches and other insects and even rats, so that sometimes their visit is 
not an unmixed curse. I believe this is the same species of ant (or a nearly 
allied one) as that in West Africa whose savage propensities are utilised by 
negroes for a hideous torture. When it is wished that a person—generally a 
woman—should die by inches, he or she is tied down on the ground by the 
home of these warrior ants. The ants are then thoroughly disturbed and 
enraged and left to wreak their vengeance on the unhappy human being at 
their mercy, whom in time they will not only kill, but whose flesh they will 
devour, leaving the bones picked clean. 1 
Another ant remarkable for disagreeable qualities is the Poner a, a rather 
large-sized insect for this family, perhaps three-quarters of an inch long with 
the abdomen striped in black and white. The Ponera exudes the most 
offensive odour, something like the smell of the little European ant known 
as the Pismire, only ten times stronger. This stench becomes infinitely worse 
if an insect is killed when it will sometimes pervade the whole house. Persons 
who have not actually witnessed this are not able to conceive that such a 
terrible fcetor can proceed from the body of so small an insect. I remember 
Mr. Sharpe complaining to me once that there was a bad smell like drains 
in the newly built Vice-consulate at Blantyre, though we both agreed that 
such was impossible because there were no drains. As soon as I sniffed the 
scent, however, I felt sure it was the Ponera ant and on taking up the matting 
of the ground floor one of these insects was discovered crushed underneath, 
and once it was removed the smell completely disappeared. 
The Order Diptcra. shall conclude my survey of the insects. Amongst other 
pests it produces at least three species of gnats (mosquitoes) ; midges—otherwise 
called “ sand-flies ” ; enormous horse-flies nearly an inch in length ; bluebottles ; 
house-flies ; gad-flies; and the celebrated tsetse. There is also a fly not as yet 
identified which with its ovipositor probes the skin of human beings even through 
clothing, especially on the legs or back, and inserts an egg. This egg develops 
into a small grub which is the cause of a very painful boil from which it event¬ 
ually emerges. 
Of the mosquitoes there are, as I have said, apparently three kinds—one 
1 There was a case on the Niger in the early “eighties” tried by Consul Hewett, wherein a negro 
missionary and his wife were convicted of thus doing to death a native girl who had offended them. 
