WEST INDIES. 
29 
CHAP. I.] 
carnivorous ant.* It is certain that these minute 
and busy creatures soon clear a sugar plantation of 
rats, (in some places a most destructive pest)* and 
that insects and animalcula of all kinds seem to 
constitute their natural food. The fact therefore 
may be true; but having had no opportunity to ve¬ 
rify it by ocular demonstration, I consign it over 
to future inquiry. If the information be just, the 
discovery is of importance. 
Hitherto, I have said nothing of a very import¬ 
ant branch in the sugar-planting, I mean the me¬ 
thod of manuring the lands. The necessity of gi¬ 
ving even the best soil occasional assistance is uni¬ 
versally admitted, and the usual way of doing it in 
the West Indies is now to be described. 
The manure generally used is a compost, formed. 
* It Is the Formica omnivora of Linnaeus, and is called in Jamaica 
the Raffles' ant, having been introduced there, as is commonly belie¬ 
ved, by one Thomas R iffles, front the Havanna, about the year 1762. 
—But I conceive it was known in the island from the earliest times, 
and that it is precisely described by Sloane, as the Formica fusca mini - 
ma , antennis longissimis. It is probably the same which, in the introduc¬ 
tion to his first volume, he relates, that the ancient Spanish inhabitants 
so much complained of. He says, that the Spaniards deserted the 
part of the country where they had first settled, merely on account of 
these troublesome inmates j declaring, that they frequently eat out the 
eyes of their young children as they lay in their cradles. If the reader 
has faith enough to credit this circumstance, he may believe some mar¬ 
vellous stories of the same kind, which are now-a-days related of the 
same insects by many venerable old gen tlewomen in Jamaica. 
