A third party is no less actively employed on the scene of destruction, cutting out circular pieces of the leaves, which, as soon as they drop upon the ground, are immediately seized by the attentive and indefatigable carriers. Neither fire nor water can prevent them from proceeding with their work. Though thousands may be killed, yet in less than an hour all the bodies will have been removed. Should the highway be closed by an insurmountable obstacle, another is soon laid out, and after a few hours the operations, momentarily disturbed, resume their former activity.
The use of the leaves is to thatch the curious domelike edifices which these indefatigable builders raise over their burrows, and to prevent the loose earth from falling in. Some of these domes are of gigantic dimensions, measuring two feet in height and forty feet in diameter—a prodigious size when compared with the puny proportions of the tiny architects that raise them. Division of labour is carried on to a wonderful extent in these buildings, for the labourers who fetch the leaves do not place them, but merely fling them down on the ground, when they are picked up by a relay of workers who lay them in their proper order. As soon as they have been properly arranged they are covered with small pellets of earth, and in a very short time they are quite hidden by their earthy covering. From these domes cylindrical shafts lead down into the mysterious recesses of the burrows, whose subterranean galleries are so vast and complicated that they have never been fully investigated. Some idea of their extent may be formed from the fact that sulphur smoke having been blown into a nest, one of the outlets was detected at a distance of seventy yards.
Not satisfied with devouring his harvests, the tropical ants leave man no rest even within doors, and trespass upon his household comforts in a thousand various ways.
In Mainas, a province on the Upper Amazon, Professor Pöppig counted no less than seven different species of ants among the tormenting inmates of his hut. The diminutive red Amache was particularly fond of sweets. Favoured by its smallness, it penetrates through the imperceptible openings of a cork, and the traveller was often obliged to throw away the syrup which in that humid and sultry country replaces the use of crystallised sugar, from its having been changed into an ant-comfit. This troublesome lover of sweets lives under the corner-posts of the hut, so that it is quite impossible to dislodge him.
The devastations of the house-ants are peculiarly hateful to the naturalist, whose collections, often gathered with so much danger and trouble, they pitilessly destroy. Richard Schomburgk suspended boxes with insects from the ceiling by threads strongly rubbed over with arsenic soap; but when, on the following morning, he wished to examine his treasures, instead of his rare and beautiful specimens he found nothing but a host of villanous red ants, who crawling down the threads, had found means to invade the boxes and utterly to destroy their valuable contents.
FORAGING ANTS.
In countless multitudes the Driver or Foraging ants break forth from the primeval forest, marching through the country in compact order, like a well-drilled army. Every creature they meet in their way falls a victim to their dreadful onslaught—rats, mice, lizards, and even the huge python, when in a state of surfeit from recent feeding. If a house obstructs their route, they do not turn out of the way, but go quite through it. Though they sting cruelly when molested, the West Indian planter is not sorry to see them in his house, for it is but a passing visit, and their appearance is the death-warrant for every spider, scorpion, cockroach, or reptile that pollutes his dwelling. Unfortunately, this thorough cleansing is but of short duration, as in less than a week tropical life calls forth a new generation of vermin.
The wonderful societies of the ants, their strength and perseverance, their unwearied industry, their astonishing intelligence, are so well known, and have been so often and so admirably described[22], that it would be trespassing on the patience of my readers were I to enter into any lengthened details on the subject. And yet, the observations of naturalists have chiefly been confined to the European species, while the economy of the infinitely more numerous tropical ants, confined to countries or places hardly ever visited, or even unknown to civilised man, remains an inexhaustible field for future inquiry.
