Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/371

 exciting terror wherever they go, apply only to the Ecitons, or foraging ants, a totally different group of this tribe of insects. The Ecitons are called Tauóca by the Indians, who are always on the look-out for their armies when they traverse the forest, so as to avoid being attacked. I met with ten distinct species of them, nearly all of which have a different system of marching; eight were new to science when I sent them to England. Some are found commonly in every part of the country, and one is peculiar to the open campos of Santarem; but, as nearly all the species are found together at Ega, where the forest swarmed with their armies, I have left an account of the habits of the whole genus for this part of my narrative. The Ecitons resemble, in their habits, the Driver-ants of Tropical Africa; but they have no close relationship with them in structure, and indeed belong to quite another sub-group of the ant-tribe.

Like many other ants, the communities of Ecitons are composed, besides males and females, of two classes of workers, a large-headed (worker-major) and a small-headed (worker-minor) class; the large-heads have, in some species, greatly lengthened jaws, the small-heads have jaws always of the ordinary shape; but the two classes are not sharply-defined in structure and function, except in two of the species. There is, in all of them a little difference amongst the workers regarding the size of the head; but in some species (E. legionis) this is not sufficient to cause a separation into classes, with division of labour; in others (E. hamata) the jaws are so monstrously lengthened in the worker-majors, that they are incapacitated from taking part in the labours which the