“The negroes relate that criminals were in former times exposed in the path of the bashikouay ants, as the most cruel manner of putting to death.
“Two very remarkable practices of theirs remain to be related. When, on their line of march, they must cross a stream, they throw themselves across and form a tunnel—a living tunnel—connecting two trees or high bushes on opposite sides of the little stream. This is done with great speed, and is effected by a great number of ants, each of which clings with its fore claws to its next neighbor’s body or hind claws. Thus they form a high, safe tubular bridge, through which the whole vast regiment marches in regular order. If disturbed, or if the arch is broken by the violence of some animal, they instantly attack the offender with the greatest animosity.
A TERROR OF THE INSECT KINGDOM.
“The bashikouay have the sense of smell finely developed, as indeed have all the ants I know of, and they are guided very much by it. They are larger than any ant we have in America, being at least half an inch long, and are armed with very powerful fore legs and sharp jaws, with which they bite. They are red or dark-brown in color. Their numbers are so great that one does not like to enter into calculations; but I have seen one continual line passing at good speed a particular place for twelve hours. The reader may imagine for himself how many millions on millions there may have been contained here.”
And yet the ants of Africa are the chief agents employed in forming a fertile soil. “But for their labors,” remarks Dr. Livingstone, “the tropical forests, bad as they now are with fallen trees, would be a thousand times worse. They would be impassible on account of the heaps of dead vegetation lying on the surface, and emitting worse effluvia than the comparatively small unburied collections do now. When one looks at the wonderful adaptations throughout creation, and the varied operations carried on with such wisdom and skill, the idea of second causes looks clumsy. We are viewing the direct handiwork of Him who is the one and only Power in the universe; wonderful in counsel; in whom we all live, and move and have our being.”
There are vast numbers of annoying insects in all portions of the continent, which in this respect, perhaps, is neither better nor worse than other parts of the world, where little annoyances make up the great sum of human misery. It is only one of many proofs that Africa is the region of contrasts, that the greatest animals flee from a little insect, the life of scores of whom might be stamped out by a single footstep, yet the aggregate labors of which preserve the continent from desolation and decay.
