138 TlMEHRI. 
ble, or has been deemed impossible, to grow fruit-trees and 
vegetables owing to the depredations of the leaf-cutting 
ants, which, in a very short space of time, strip the plants 
of all their foliage. Mr. Belt in " The Naturalist in 
Nicaragua " relates how, in a district where the ants 
were very abundant and where complaints were rife and 
gardens barren, he was enabled to grow, in spite of the 
ants, large quantities of fruits and vegetables that were 
particularly appreciated by them. On finding the ants 
in his garden beginning their work of destru6lion, he 
followed their track to their nest— and here he began his 
war against them. Making a mixture in the proportion 
of one pint of common brown carbolic acid to four 
buckets of water, he poured this down and over the nest, 
in sufficient quantity to saturate it. The result was striking. 
The ants left the garden to prote6t their home, and for 
the next few months were occupied in other districts 
building a new nest. Again they returned, however ; 
and following them to their nest, he treated them as 
before, and with a similar result. They attempted a 
migration to their former nest, but being check-mated in 
this direftion, betook themselves to fresh fields and 
pastures new. By carefully watching the garden, so as 
to deteft the first approach, and by warring against the 
insefts with his mixture in their very home, he succeeded 
in keeping them at bay, and in reaping his harvest of 
fruit and vegetables. 
He found also that crystals of Corrosive Sublimate 
(Bichloride of Mercury) had a most wonderful effe6l on 
the ants in the dry season. At such times, sprinkled in 
or across their track, it maddened the inserts, which, 
rushing about, attacked their fellows and caused a war 
