The Universal Dominion of Insects—Mosquitoes—Stinging Flies—Œstrus Hominis—The Chegoe or Jigger—The Filaria Medinensis—The Bête-Rouge—Blood-sucking Ticks—Garapatas—The Land-leeches in Ceylon—The Tsetsé Fly—The Tsalt-Salya—The Locust—Its dreadful Devastations—Cockroaches—The Drummer—The Cucarachas and Chilicabras—Tropical Ants—The Saüba—The Driver Ants—Termites—Their wonderful Buildings—The Silkworm—The Cochineal—The Gumlac Insect—Insects used as Food and Ornaments.

The insect tribes may, without exaggeration, be affirmed to hold a kind of universal empire over the earth and its inhabitants, for nothing that possesses, or has possessed, life is secure from their attacks. They vanquish the cunning of the fox, the bulk of the elephant, the strength of the lion; they plague the reindeer of the northern tundras, and the antelope of the African wilds; and all the weapons with which Nature has furnished the higher orders of animals against their mightier foes prove ineffectual against these puny persecutors, whose very smallness serves to render them invincible. How numerous are the sufferings they entail on man! How manifold the injuries they inflict on his person or his property! To secure himself from their attacks, a perpetual warfare, an ever-wakeful vigilance, is necessary; for, though destroyed by thousands, new legions ever make their appearance, and to repose after a victory is equivalent to a defeat.

In our temperate zone, where a higher cultivation of the ground tends to keep down the number of the lower animals, their persecutions, though frequently annoying, may still be borne with patience; but in many of the tropical regions, where man is either too indolent or not sufficiently numerous to set bounds to their increase, the insects constitute one of the great plagues of life.

Along the low river-banks, near stagnant waters, and everywhere on hot and swampy grounds, the blood-thirsty Mosquitoes appear periodically in countless multitudes, the dread of all who are exposed to their attacks.

Not satisfied with piercing the flesh with their sharp proboscis, which at the same time forms a kind of syphon through which the blood flows, these malignant gnats, of which there are many species, inject a poison into the wound, which causes inflammation, and prolongs the pain.

In Angola, Dr. Livingstone found the banks of the river Seuza infested by legions of the most ferocious mosquitoes he ever met with during the course of his long travels. ‘Not one of our party could get a snatch of sleep. I was taken into the house of a Portuguese, but was soon glad to make my escape, and lie across the path on the lee-side of the fire, where the smoke blew over my body. My host wondered at my want of taste, and I at his want of feeling; for, to our astonishment, he and the other inhabitants had actually become used to what was at least equal to a nail through the heel of one’s boot, or the tooth-ache.’

‘He who has never sailed on one of the great rivers of tropical America, the Orinoco, or the Magdalena,’ says Humboldt, ‘can form no idea of the torments inflicted by the mosquitoes. However accustomed the naturalist may be to suffer pain without complaining, however his attention may be riveted by the examination of some interesting object, he is unavoidably disturbed when Mosquitoes, Zancudos, Zejens, and Tempraneros cover his hands and face, pierce his clothes, or creep into his nose and mouth. In the missions of the Orinoco, in these small villages, situated on the river banks and surrounded by interminable woods, this plague affords an inexhaustible subject for conversation. When two people meet in the morning their first questions are—‘How did the Zancudos behave last night?’ ‘How are the mosquitoes to-day?’

At the mouth of the Red River the unfortunate inhabitants lay down at night upon the ground, and cover themselves with three or four inches of sand, so that only the head remains free, over which they spread a protecting cloth. Above the influx of the Rio Arauca into the Orinoco, at the cataracts of Baragnon, the atmosphere up to a height of 15 or 21 feet, is filled with a dense mist of stinging insects. Placing oneself in some dark spot, for instance in one of the deep hollows formed in the cataracts by mounds of granitic blocks and looking towards the opening illumined by the sun, one sees whole clouds of mosquitoes, increasing or diminishing in density as the creatures in their slow and rhythmic motions now draw more closely together, and then again separate. In Esmeralda, at the eastern extremity of the Upper Orinoco, the mosquito clouds are almost as thick as at the cataracts. When the superior of the monastic order to which the mission belongs, wishes to punish a lay brother, he sends him to Esmeralda, or, as the monks facetiously remark, ‘condemns him to the mosquitoes.’

It is a well-known fact that the various species of gnats or flies comprehended under this general name, do not associate, but appear at different times of the day. As often as the scene changes or as ‘other insects mount guard,’ one enjoys a few minutes’ rest; for after the retreat of one host, its successors are not immediately on the spot. From half-past six in the morning till five in the afternoon the air is filled with mosquitoes of the genus Simulium. An hour before sunset, these are replaced by a small species of Culex called the Tempraneros or early-risers, as they also show themselves at sunrise. Their stay in the afternoon scarcely lasts an hour and a half, and then one feels soon after the painful sting of a larger Culex—the Zancudo—who, plunging his blood-thirsty proboscis into the skin, causes an excruciating pain. The Zancudo, a ‘child of the night,’ disappears at sunrise, and then makes place for the matutinal Tempranero. As all these winged tormentors spend the greater part of their lives in the water, we cannot wonder that their numbers diminish as the distance from the banks of the rivers intersecting the forests increases. Their favourite resorts are the places where their transformation takes place, and where they on their part are soon about to lay their eggs. The mosquito clouds hover only above or near the waters, and it would be a great error to suppose that the vast forests extending between the river valleys are all equally infested with this insect plague.

From time to time the mosquitoes migrate like the social stentor monkeys. Formerly no other Culex was known at Simiti on the Magdalen river but the small species called Zejen. The people slept unmolested, for the Zejen is a diurnal insect. But in 1801 the great blue-winged Zancudo made his appearance in such numbers that the poor inhabitants of Simiti could find no rest at night.

Slight differences of climate or food seem to have an influence on the intensity of the poison which the same species discharges through its serrated proboscis. One cannot refrain from smiling at the disputes of the missionaries about the size and voracity of the mosquitoes in different parts of the same river. In a land so completely severed from the rest of the world, this forms the favourite subject for conversation. ‘How much I pity you,’ said the missionary from the falls as he took leave of his colleague at the Cassiquiare; ‘you are like me, alone in this land of jaguars and monkeys, but as to my mosquitoes I can boast that one of mine is a match for three of yours.’

This unequal voracity of the insects in different places, this various intensity of poison in the same species, are very remarkable, but similar phenomena are met with in the classes of the large animals. In Angostura the crocodile attacks man, while in New Barcelona people bathe in his presence without fear. The jaguars on the isthmus of Panama are cowardly when compared with those of the Upper Orinoco; and the Indians know very well that the monkeys from one part of the country can easily be tamed, while individuals of the same species caught elsewhere will rather die of hunger than submit to captivity.

Whoever has sojourned in a mosquito land knows that there is no radical remedy against them. The Indians who besmear their body with arnatto or turtle fat, slap every moment with their flat hands on their shoulders, back, and legs as often as if they were not painted at all. On the banks of the Amazons the people use cow-dung burnt at their doors, to keep away the praya or plague, as they very justly term the mosquitoes. In the evening every house and cottage has its pan of dung smouldering in the verandah and emitting rather an agreeable odour—but where the insects are very numerous and bloodthirsty this fumigation also is of no avail.

Not content with a passing attack, a South American gadfly (Œstrus hominis) deposits its eggs under the human skin, where the larvæ continue for six months. If disturbed, they penetrate deeper, and produce troublesome ulcers, which sometimes even prove fatal. Thus, in tropical America, we find the same insect tribe which plagues our oxen and horses, and reduces the northern reindeer to desperation, settle on man himself, and render even the lord of creation subject to its power.

The Chegoe, Pique, or Jigger of the West Indies (Pulex penetrans) is another great torment of the hot countries of America.

It looks exactly like a small flea, and a stranger would take it for one. However, in about four and twenty hours he would have several broad hints that he had made a mistake in his ideas of the animal. Without any respect for colour, it attacks different parts of the body, but chiefly the feet, betwixt the toe-nails and the flesh. There it buries itself and causes an itching, which at first is not unpleasant, but after a few days gradually increases to a violent pain. At the same time a small white tumour, about the size of a pea, and with a dark spot in the centre, rises under the skin. The tumour is the rapidly growing nest of the chegoe, the spot the little plague itself. And now it is high time to think of its extirpation, an operation in which the negro women are very expert. Gently removing with a pin the skin from the little round white ball or nest, precisely as we should peel an orange, and pressing the flesh all round, they generally succeed in squeezing it out without breaking, and then fill the cavity with snuff or tobacco, to guard against the possibility of a fresh colony being formed by some of the eggs remaining in the wound. New comers are particularly subject to these creatures. Waterton, who by practice appears to have become very expert in eradicating chegoes’ nests, once took four out of his feet in the course of the day, and a negress extracted no less than eighty-three out of Richard Schomburgk’s toes in one sitting. ‘Every evening,’ says the venerable naturalist of Walton Hall, ‘before sundown, it was part of my toilet to examine my feet and see that they were clear of chegoes. Now and then a nest would escape the scrutiny, and then I had to smart for it a day or two after. A chegoe once lit upon the back of my hand: wishful to see how he worked, I allowed him to take possession. He immediately set to work head foremost, and in about half an hour he had completely buried himself in the skin. I then let him feel the point of my knife, and exterminated him.’

If the prompt extraction of the chegoes’ nests is neglected, the worm-like larvæ creep out, continue the mining operations of their parent, and produce a violent inflammation, which may end in the mortification of a limb. It not unfrequently happens that negroes from sheer idleness or negligence in the first instance have been lamed for life and become loathsome to the sight. In such a state, these miserable objects are incurable, and death only puts an end to their sufferings.

A still more dangerous plague, peculiar to the coast of Guinea and the interior of tropical Africa, to Arabia, and the adjacent countries, is the Filaria medinensis of Linnæus. This dreaded worm comes to the herbage in the morning dew, from whence it pierces the skin, and enters the feet of such as walk without shoes, causing the most painful irritation, succeeded by violent inflammation and fever. The natives extract it with the greatest caution by twisting a piece of silk round one extremity of the body and withdrawing it very gently. When we consider that this insidious worm is frequently twelve feet long, although not thicker than a horse-hair, we can readily imagine the difficulty of the operation. If unfortunately the animal should break, the part remaining under the skin grows with redoubled vigour, and frequently occasions a fatal inflammation.

One of these most unwelcome intruders once entered Dampier’s ankle. ‘I was in great torment,’ says this entertaining traveller, ‘before it came out. My leg and ankle swelled, and looked very angry, and I kept on a plaster to bring it to a head. At last, drawing off my plaster, out came three inches of the worm, and my pain abated. Till that time I was ignorant of my malady, and a gentleman at whose house I was took it for a nerve; but I knew well what it was, and presently rolled it up on a small stick. After this I opened the place every morning and evening, and strained the worm out gently, about two inches at a time—not without some pain—till I had at length got it out.’

Among the plagues of Guiana and the West Indies we must not forget a little insect in the grass and on the shrubs, which the French call bête-rouge. It is of a beautiful scarlet colour, and so minute that you must bring your eye close to it before you can perceive it. It abounds most in the rainy season. Its bite causes an intolerable itching, which, according to Richard Schomburgk, who writes from personal experience, drives by day the perspiration of anguish from every pore, and at night makes one’s hammock resemble the gridiron on which Saint Lawrence was roasted. The best way to get rid of the plague is to rub the part affected with lemon-juice or rum. ‘You must be careful not to scratch it,’ says Waterton. ‘If you do so and break the skin, you expose yourself to a sore. The first year I was in Guiana the bête-rouge and my own want of knowledge, and, I may add, the little attention I paid to it, created an ulcer above the ankle which annoyed me for six months, and if I hobbled out into the grass, a number of bête-rouges would settle on the edges of the sore and increase the inflammation.’

The blood-sucking Ticks are also to be classed among the intolerable nuisances of many tropical regions. A large American species called Garapata (Ixodes sanguisuga) fixes on the legs of travellers, and gradually buries its whole head in the skin, which the body, disgustingly distended with blood, is unable to follow. On being violently removed, the former remains in the wound, and often produces painful sores. The Indians returning in the evening from the forest or from their field labour generally bring some of these creatures along with them, swollen to the size of hazel nuts.

Though countless hosts of ticks infest the Ceylonese jungle, though mosquitoes without number swarm over the lower country, yet the land-leeches which beset the traveller in the rising grounds are a still more detested plague. ‘They are not frequent in the plains,’ says Sir E. Tennent, ‘which are too hot and dry for them; but amongst the rank vegetation in the lower ranges of the hill-country, which is kept damp by frequent showers, they are found in tormenting profusion. They are terrestrial, never visiting ponds or streams. In size they are about an inch in length, and as fine as a common knitting needle, but capable of distention till they equal a quill in thickness and attain a length of nearly two inches. Their structure is so flexible that they can insinuate themselves through the meshes of the finest stocking, not only seizing on the feet and ankles, but ascending to the back and throat, and fastening on the tenderest parts of the body. The coffee planters who live amongst these pests are obliged in order to exclude them, to envelope their legs in “leech gaiters,” made of closely woven cloth.

‘In moving, the land-leeches have the power of planting one extremity on the earth and raising the other perpendicularly to watch for their victim. Such is their vigilance and instinct that, on the approach of a passer-by to a spot which they infest, they may be seen amongst the grass and fallen leaves, on the edge of a native path, poised erect, and preparing for their attack on man and horse. On descrying their prey they advance rapidly by semicircular strides, fixing one end firmly and arching the other forwards, till by successive advances they can lay hold of the traveller’s foot, when they disengage themselves from the ground and ascend his dress in search of an aperture to enter. In these encounters the individuals in the rear of a party of travellers in the jungle invariably fare worst, as the leeches once warned of their approach congregate with singular celerity. Their size is so insignificant, and the wound they make so skilfully punctured, that the first intimation of their onslaught is the trickling of the blood, or a chill feeling of the leech when it begins to hang heavily on the skin from being distended by its repast. Horses are driven wild by them, and stamp the ground in fury to shake them from their fetlocks, to which they hang in bloody tassels. The bare legs of the palankin-bearers and coolies are a favourite resort, and their hands being too much engaged to be spared to pull them off, the leeches hang like bunches of grapes round their ankles; and I have seen the blood literally flowing over the edge of a European’s shoe from their innumerable bites. In healthy constitutions the wounds, if not irritated, generally heal, occasioning no other inconvenience than a slight inflammation and itching; but in those with a bad state of body, the punctures, if rubbed, are liable to degenerate into ulcers, which may lead to the loss of limb or of life. Both Marshall and Davy mention that, during the march of the troops in the mountains, when the Kandyans were in rebellion, in 1818, the soldiers, and especially the Madras Sepoys, with the pioneers and coolies, suffered so severely from this cause that numbers of them perished.’

Among the many noxious insects destructive to the property of man, there is, perhaps none more remarkable than the South African Tsetsé-fly (Glossīna morsitans), whose peculiar buzz when once heard can never be forgotten by the traveller whose means of locomotion are domestic animals; for it is well known that the bite of this poisonous insect is certain death to the ox, horse, and dog. Fortunately it is limited to particular districts, frequently infesting one bank of a river while the other contains not a single specimen, or else travelling in South Africa would be utterly impossible, and we should now know no more of Lake Ngami or the Zambesi than we did thirty years since. In one journey Dr. Livingstone lost no less than forty-three fine oxen by the bite of the tsetsé. A party of Englishmen once attempted to reach Libebé, but they had only proceeded seven or eight days’ journey to the north of the Ngami, when both horses and cattle were bitten by the fly, and the party were in consequence compelled to make a hasty retreat. One of the number was thus deprived of as many as thirty-six horses, excellent hunters, and all sustained heavy losses in cattle.

A most remarkable feature in the bite of the tsetsé is its perfect harmlessness in man and wild animals, and even calves, so long as they continue to suck the cow. The mule, ass, and goat enjoy likewise the same immunity, and many large tribes on the Zambesi can keep no domestic animals except the latter, in consequence of the scourge existing in their country. Dr. Livingstone’s children were frequently bitten, yet suffered no harm, and he saw around him numbers of zebras, buffaloes, pigs, pallahs and other antelopes, feeding quietly in the very habitat of the tsetsé, yet as undisturbed by its bite as oxen are when they first receive the fatal poison, which acts in the following manner. After a few days the eyes and nose begin to run, the coat stares as if the animal were cold, a swelling appears under the jaw, and, though the animal continues to graze, emaciation commences, accompanied with a peculiar flaccidity of the muscles; and this proceeds unchecked until, perhaps months afterwards, purging comes on, and the animal, no longer able to graze, perishes in a state of extreme exhaustion. Those which are in good condition often perish, soon after the wound is inflicted, with staggering and blindness, as if the brain were affected by it. Sudden changes of temperature, produced by falls of rain, seem to hasten the progress of the complaint, but in general the emaciation goes on uninterruptedly for months; and do what one may, the poor animals perish miserably, as there is no cure yet known for the disease.

Had any one of our indigenous flies similar poisonous qualities we should never have been able to escape from barbarism; if, by any fatal chance, the tsetsè were to settle among us, our prosperity would soon be at an end, and our civilisation imperilled! Reflections such as these are well calculated to humble our pride and check our presumption!

The Abyssinian Tsalt-salya or Zimb, described by Bruce, seems identical with the tsetsè, or produces at least similar symptoms. At the season when this plague makes its appearance, all the inhabitants along the sea-coast, from Melinde to Cape Gardafui, and to the south of the Red Sea, are obliged to retire with their cattle to the sandy plains to preserve them from destruction.

The French traveller, D’Escayrac, tells us of a fly in Soudan which leaves the ox uninjured but destroys the dromedary. On account of this plague the camel is confined to the northern boundary of the Soudan, while the oxen graze in safety throughout the whole country. This fly has caused more migrations among the Arabs of the Soudan than all their wars; and in the dry season it even drives the elephant from Lake Tsad by flying into its ears.

Though the locusts not seldom extend their ravages to the steppes of southern Russia, though they have been known to burst like a cloud of desolation over Transylvania and Hungary, and stray stragglers now and then even find their way to England, yet their chief habitat and birthplace is the torrid zone. They wander forth in countless multitudes, and at very irregular periods; but how it comes that they are multiplied to such an excess in particular years and not in others, has never yet been ascertained, and perhaps never will be. They are armed with two pairs of strong mandibles; their stomach is of extraordinary capacity and power; they make prodigious leaps by means of their muscular and long hind legs; and their wings even carry them far across the sea. On viewing a single locust, one can hardly conceive how they can cause such devastation, but the wonder ceases on hearing of their numbers.

Mahomet—so say his followers—once read upon the wing of a locust: ‘We are the army of God; we lay ninety-nine eggs; and if we laid a hundred, we should devour the whole earth and all that grows upon its surface.’ ‘O Allah!’ exclaimed the terrified prophet, ‘Thou who listenest patiently to the prayers of Thy Servant, destroy their young, kill their chieftains, and stop their mouths, to save the Moslems’ food from their teeth!’ Scarce had he spoken when the angel Gabriel appeared, saying, ‘God grants thee part of thy wishes.’ And, indeed, as all true believers know, this prayer of their prophet, written on a piece of paper, and enclosed in a reed which is stuck in the ground, is sure to preserve a field or an orchard from locust devastation.

As a locust host advances, its columns are sometimes seen rising in compact bodies as if propelled by a strong gust of wind; then, suddenly sinking, they disperse into smaller battalions, not unlike vapours floating about a hill-side at early morn, and when slightly agitated by a breeze; or they resemble huge columns of sand or smoke, changing their shape every minute.

During their flight numbers are constantly alighting—an action which has not inaptly been compared to the falling of large snow-flakes. It is, however, not until the approach of night that the locusts encamp. Woe to the spot they select as a resting-place! The sun sets on a landscape green with all the luxuriance of tropical vegetation; it rises in the morning over a region naked as the waste of the Sahara!

The tropical plague of the cockroaches has been introduced into England; but, fortunately, the giant of the family, the Blatta gigantea, a native of many of the warmer parts of Asia, Africa, and South America, is a stranger to our land: and the following truthful description of this disgusting insect gives us every reason to be thankful for its absence:—‘They plunder and erode all kinds of victuals, dressed and undressed, and damage all sorts of clothes, especially such as are touched with powder, pomatum, and similar substances; everything made of leather; books, paper, and various other articles, which if they do not destroy, at least they soil, as they frequently deposit a drop of their excrement where they settle, and, some way or other, by that means damage what they cannot devour. They fly into the flame of candles, and sometimes into the dishes; are very fond of ink and of oil, into which they are apt to fall and perish, in which case they soon turn most offensively putrid—so that a man might as well sit over the cadaverous body of a large animal as write with the ink in which they have died. They often fly into persons’ faces or bosoms, and their legs being armed with sharp spines, the pricking excites a sudden horror not easily described. In old houses they swarm by myriads, making every part filthy beyond description wherever they harbour, which in the daytime is in dark corners, behind clothes—in trunks, boxes, and, in short, every place where they can lie concealed. In old timber and deal houses, when the family is retired at night to sleep, this insect, among other disagreeable properties, has the power of making a noise which very much resembles a pretty smart knocking with the knuckle upon the wainscoting. The Blatta gigantea in the West Indies is therefore frequently known by the name of the drummer. Three or four of these noisy creatures will sometimes be impelled to answer one another, and cause such a drumming noise that none but those who are very good sleepers can rest for them. What is most disagreeable, those who have not gauze curtains are sometimes attacked by them in their sleep; the sick and dying have their extremities attacked; and the ends of the toes and fingers of the dead are frequently stripped both of the skin and flesh.’

According to Tschudi, the cucaracha and chilicabra—two large species of the cockroach—infest Peru in such numbers as almost to reduce the inhabitants to despair. Greedy, bold, cunning, they force their way into every hut, devour the stores, destroy the clothes, intrude into the beds and dishes, and defy every means that is resorted to for their destruction. Fortunately, they are held in check by many formidable enemies, particularly by a small ant, and a pretty little bird (Troglodytes audax) belonging to the wagtail family, which has some difficulty in mastering the larger cockroaches. It first of all bites off their head, and then devours their body, with the exception of their membranaceous wings. After having finished his repast, the bird hops upon the nearest bush, and there begins his song of triumph.

Many other insect plagues might be added to the list, but those I have already enumerated suffice to reconcile us to our misty climate, and to diminish our longing for the palm groves of the torrid zone.

Rivalling the mosquitoes in the art of tormenting man, and perhaps even surpassing them in numbers, the equatorial ants may truly be said to hold a despotic sway over the forest and the savannah, over the thicket and the field. It is hardly possible to penetrate into a tropical wood without being reminded, by their stings and bites, that they consider the visit as an intrusion, while they themselves unceremoniously invade the dwellings of man, and lay ruinous contributions on his stores. The inconceivable number of their species defies the memory of the naturalist, to whom many are even still entirely unknown. From almost microscopical size to an inch in length, of all colours and shades between yellow, red, brown, and black, of the most varied habits and stations, the ants of a single tropical land would furnish study for years to a zealous entomologist. Every family of plants has its peculiar species, and many trees are even the exclusive dwelling-place of some ant nowhere else to be found. In the scathes of leaves, in the corollas of flowers, in buds and blossoms, over and under the earth, in and out of doors, one meets these ubiquitous little creatures, which are undoubtedly one of the great plagues of the torrid zone.

While our indigenous ants cause a disagreeable burning on the skin, by the secretion of a corrosive acid peculiar to the race, the sting or bite of many tropical species causes the most excruciating tortures. ‘I have no words,’ says Schomburgk, ‘to describe the pain inflicted upon me by the mandibles of the Ponera clavata, a large, and, fortunately, not very common ant, whose long black body is beset with single hairs. Like an electric shock the pain instantly shot through my whole body, and soon after acquired the greatest intensity in the breast, and over and under the armpits. After a few minutes I felt almost completely paralysed, so that I could only with the greatest difficulty, and under the most excruciating tortures, totter towards the plantation, which, however, it was impossible for me to reach. I was found senseless on the ground, and the following day a violent wound fever ensued.’

‘Having, while in Angola, accidentally stepped upon a nest of red ants,’ says Livingstone, ‘not an instant seemed to elapse before a simultaneous attack was made on various unprotected parts, up the trousers from below, and on my neck and breast above. The bites of these furies were like sparks of fire, and there was no retreat. I jumped about for a second or two, then in desperation tore off all my clothing, and rubbed and picked them off seriatim as quickly as possible! Fortunately, no one observed this rencontre, or word might have been taken back to the village that I had become mad. It is really astonishing how such small bodies can contain so large an amount of ill nature. They not only bite, but twist themselves round after the mandibles are inserted, to produce laceration and pain more than would be effected by the single wound. Frequently, while sitting on the ox, as he happened to tread near a band, they would rush up his legs to the rider, and soon let him know that he had disturbed their march. They possess no fear, attacking with equal ferocity the largest as well as the smallest animals. When any person has leaped over the band, numbers of them leave the ranks and rush along the path, seemingly anxious for a fight.’

But however formidable the weapons of the ants may be, yet the injuries they inflict upon the property of man, pouring over his plantations like a flood, and sweeping away the fruits of his labours, are of a much more lasting and serious nature than their painful bite or venomous sting.

In the West Indies, the brown-black Viviagua, about one-third of an inch long, and with a prickly thorax, is the greatest enemy of the coffee plantations. In one day it will rob a full-grown tree of all its leaves. It digs deep subterranean passages of considerable dimensions and irregular forms, with a great number of hand-high galleries branching out from the sides, and does even more harm to the coffee-plants by its mining operations than by robbing them of their foliage.

Other species are no less destructive to the sugar plantations, either by settling in the interior of the stalks or by undermining the roots so that the plant becomes sickly and dies.

The Saüba or Coushie (Œcodoma cephalotes), a species of ant distinguished by its large head, is the most formidable enemy of the banana and cassava plantations. Such are its numbers that in a very short time it will strip off the leaves of an entire field. Even where their nest is a mile distant from a plantation, these arch depredators know how to find it, and soon form a highway, about half a foot broad, on which they keep up the most active communications with the object of their attack. In masterly order, side by side, one army is seen to move onwards towards the field, while another is returning to the nest. In this last column each individual carries a round piece of leaf, about the size of a sixpence, which is held by one of its edges. If the distance is too great, a party meets the weary carriers half way, and relieves them of their load. Although innumerable ants may thus be moving along, yet none of them will ever be seen to be in the other’s way; and all goes on with the regularity of clock-work.

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.

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 described22, 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.

The study of their various buildings alone, from the little we know of them, would occupy a zealous entomologist for years. Here we have an American species that forms its globular nest of the size of a large Dutch cheese, of small twigs artistically interlaced; there another, which (Formica bispinosa) uses cotton for its building material, and through the chemical agency of its pungent secretion converts it into a spongy substance.

On the west coast of Borneo, Mr. Adams noticed two kinds of ants’ nests—one species of the size of a man’s hand, adhering to the trunk of trees resembling, when cut through, a section of the lungs; the other was composed of small withered bits of sticks and leaves, heaped up in the axils of branches, somewhat in the form of flattened cylinders and compressed cones. A third species, still more ingenious, constructs its domicile out of a large leaf, bending the two halves by the weight of united millions till the opposite margins meet at the under surface of the mid-rib, where they are secured by a gummy matter. The stores and larvæ are conveyed into the nest so made by regular beaten tracks along the trunk and branches of the tree.

On the large plains near Lake Dilolo, where water stands so long annually as to allow the lotus and other aqueous plants to come to maturity, Dr. Livingstone had occasion to admire the wonderful sagacity of the ants, whom he declares to be wiser than some men, as they learn by experience. When all the land is submerged a foot deep, they manage to exist by ascending to little houses, built of black tenacious loam, on stalks of grass, and placed higher than the line of inundation. This must have been the result of experience, for if they had waited till the water actually invaded their habitations on the ground, they would not have been able to procure materials for their higher quarters, unless they dived down to the bottom for every mouthful of clay. They must have been built in anticipation, ‘and if so,’ says the celebrated traveller, ‘let us humbly hope that the sufferers by the late inundations in France may be possessed of as much common sense as the little black ants of the Dilolo plains.’

Unable or unwilling to work themselves, some species of ants make war upon others for the sole purpose of procuring bondsmen, who literally and truly labour for them, and perform all the domestic duties of the community; but the Mexican honey ants (Myrmecocystus Mexicanus) are, if possible, still more remarkable, for here we see an animal rearing others of the same species for the purpose of food. Some of these ants, namely, are distinguished by an enormous swelling of the abdomen, which is converted into a mass like honey, and being unable, in their unwieldly condition, to seek food themselves, are fed by the labourers, until they are doomed to die for the benefit of the community. Whether this vast distension is the result of an intestinal rupture, caused by an excessive indulgence of the appetite, or whether they are purposely selected, confined, and over-fed, or wounded for the purpose, has not yet been ascertained.

The termites, or white ants, as they are commonly called, though they in reality belong to a totally different order of insects, are spread in countless numbers over all the warmer regions of the earth, emulating on the dry land the bore-worm in the sea; for when they have once penetrated into a building, no timber except ebony and iron-wood, which are too hard, or such as is strongly impregnated with camphor and aromatic oils, which they dislike, is capable of resisting their attacks. Their favourite food is wood, and so great are their multitudes, so admirable their tools, that in a few days they devour the timberwork of a spacious apartment. Outwardly, the beams and rafters may seem untouched, while their core is completely consumed, for these destructive miners work in the dark, and seldom attack the outside until they have previously concealed themselves and their operations by a coat of clay. Scarcely any organic substance remains free from their attacks; and forcing their resistless way into trunks, chests, and wardrobes, they will often devour in one night all the shoes, boots, clothes, and papers they may contain. It is principally owing to their destructions, says Humboldt, that it is so rare to find papers in tropical America of an older date than fifty or sixty years. Smeathman relates, that a party of them once took a fancy to a pipe of fine old Madeira, not for the sake of the wine, almost the whole of which they let out, but of the staves, which, however, may not have proved less tasteful from having imbibed some of the costly liquor. On surveying a room which had been locked up during an absence of a few weeks, Forbes, the author of the ‘Oriental Memoirs,’ observed a number of advanced works in various directions towards some prints and drawings in English frames; the glasses appeared to be uncommonly dull, and the frames covered with dust. On attempting to wipe it off, he was astonished to find the glasses fixed to the wall, not suspended in frames as he left them, but completely surrounded by an incrustation cemented by the white ants, who had actually eaten up the deal frames and backboards and the greater part of the paper, and left the glasses upheld by the incrustation or covered way which they had formed during their depredations.

On the small island of Goree, near Cape Verde, the French naturalist, Adanson, lived in a straw hut, which, though quite new at the time he took up his residence in it, became transparent in many places before the month was out. This might have been endured, but the villanous termites ravaged his trunk, destroyed his books, penetrated into his bed, and at last attacked the naturalist himself. Neither sweet nor salt water, neither vinegar nor corrosive liquids, were able to drive them away, and so Adanson thought it best to abandon the premises, and to look out for another lodging.

The ravages of the termites are, however, perhaps more than compensated by their services in removing decayed vegetable substances from the face of the earth, and thus contributing to the purity of the air and the beauty of the landscape. If the forests of the tropical world, where thousands of gigantic trees succumb to the slow ravages of time, or are suddenly prostrated by the hurricane, still appear in all the verdure of perpetual youth, it is chiefly to the unremitting labours of the termites that they are indebted for their freshness.

Though belonging to a different order of the insect world, the economy of the termites is very similar to that of the real ants. They also form communities, divided into distinct orders; labourers (larvæ), soldiers (neuters), perfect insects—and they also erect buildings, but of a far more astonishing structure. Several of their species (T. atrox, bellicosus Smeathman) erect high dome-like edifices, rising from the plain, so that at first sight they might be mistaken for the hamlets of the negroes; others (T. destructor arborum) build on trees, often at a considerable height above the ground. These sylvan abodes are frequently the size of a hogshead, and are more generally found in the New World.