Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/47

 servant told me that they would carry off the whole contents of the two baskets (about two bushels) in the course of the night, if they were not driven off; so we tried to exterminate them by killing them with our wooden clogs. It was impossible, however, to prevent fresh hosts coming in as fast as we killed their companions. They returned the next night; and I was then obliged to lay trains of gunpowder along their line, and blow them up. This, repeated many times, at last seemed to intimidate them, for we were free from their visits during the remainder of my residence at the place. What they did with the hard dry grains of mandioca I was never able to ascertain, and cannot even conjecture. The meal contains no gluten, and therefore would be useless as cement. It contains only a small relative portion of starch, and, when mixed with water, it separates and falls away like so much earthy matter. It may serve as food for the subterranean workers. But the young or larvæ of ants are usually fed by juices secreted by the worker nurses.

Ants, it is scarcely necessary to observe, consist, in each species, of three sets of individuals, or, as some express it, of three sexes—namely, males, females, and workers; the last-mentioned being undeveloped females. The perfect sexes are winged on their first attaining the adult state; they alone propagate their kind, flying away, previous to the act of reproduction, from the nest in which they have been reared. This winged state of the perfect males and females, and the habit of flying abroad before pairing, are very important points in the economy of ants; for they are thus enabled to