OCR Text |
Show 714 MR. R. B. WHITE ON ATTA CEPHALOTES. [Dec. 2, whether bitter, sweet, pungent, caustic, tender or tough, every is attacked by it, I was led to remark carefully the use to which the ant puts the enormous quantity of foliage which it carries to its nest. After watching the various foraging parties narrowly, I saw that some of them were engaged in carrying food, principally fruits or portions of fruit, sweet buds and blossoms, maize, rice, etc. Others, again, carry only portions of leaves, showing no selection in the quality, as also bits of straw, stick, and similar things. I then further remarked that the ants only employ this vegetable matter to make beds, upon which the eggs are deposited and hatched by the heat produced by the fermentation of the mass of leaves. Tbe ants do not eat these portions of leaf; and the larvae are fed upon selected food. When a brood has been hatched, the ants clean up their nest and carry out all the decomposed vegetable matter from tbe egg-beds. This they do periodically; and the half-rotten fragments of leaves may always be distinguished from the pellets of earth &c. which the ants ordinarily bring out of their excavations. This hotbed matter is also always thrown out in heaps apart, and in large ant-hills often amounts to ten bushels and upwards. The only efficacious remedy which the farmer has hitherto used against these enemies is the extermination of the ant-colony, which is effected by digging out the nest, flooding it with water or poisoning its inmates with sulphur or acid. But it is often impossible to put this plan in practice-where a clearing or plantation is surrounded by forests or uncultivated ground, in which hundreds and thousands of ant-hills are to be found. I have tried, as many people before me, all sorts of schemes, including the use of all the abominable-smelling and tasting compounds which can be used without killing the plants which one wishes to protect, and have found all inefficacious. But it seems that tbe real remedy is near at hand; and it was shown to m e by a negro. When a plantation or garden is attacked, all one has to do is to procure a bushel or so of the decayed leaf beds thrown out of an ant-hill entirely unconnected with that from which the invading ants proceed, and scatter this matter on the ant-roads and about the plantation. The effect is miraculous. A panic siezes the ants. They drop their burdens instantly ; the word is passed along the roads ; and empty-handed the whole army hurries off to the nest. They will not return to the same plantation for many weeks ; and even then they avoid all spots in which traces of this (to them) offensive matter may remain. The smallest dose suffices ; and a bushel of rotten bedding will defend acres of ground. But care must be taken, as remarked, to procure this matter from a distinct ant-hill. If it be from the same nest, the ants take no notice of it. I have seen this plan tried repeatedly during the last few months, and it has never failed. The biggest army of ants, engineers, pioneers, directors-general and all, is utterly discomfited by this simple means of defence. What the ants see in it I cannot say ; but I fancy that they imagine themselves to be in danger of being |