Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/385

 by step, under the protection of these covered passages, through the thickets, and on reaching a rotting log, or other promising hunting-ground, pour into the crevices in search of booty. I have traced their arcades, occasionally, for a distance of one or two hundred yards; the grains of earth are taken from the soil over which the column is passing, and are fitted together without cement. It is this last-mentioned feature that distinguishes them from the similar covered roads made by Termites, who use their glutinous saliva to cement the grains together. The blind Ecitons, working in numbers, build up simultaneously the sides of their convex arcades, and contrive, in a surprising manner, to approximate them and fit in the key-stones without letting the loose uncemented structure fall to pieces. There was a very clear division of labour between the two classes of neuters in these blind species. The large-headed class, although not possessing monstrously-lengthened jaws like the worker-majors in E. hamata and E. drepanophora, are rigidly defined in structure from the small-headed class, and act as soldiers, defending the working community (like soldier Termites) against all comers. Whenever I made a breach in one of their covered ways, all the ants underneath were set in commotion, but the worker-minors remained behind to repair the damage, whilst the large-heads issued forth in a most menacing manner, rearing their heads and snapping their jaws with an expression of the fiercest rage and defiance.

The armies of all Ecitons are accompanied by small swarms of a kind of two-winged fly, the females of