When It Has Fixed Upon A Convenient Spot
For Its Dwelling, It Forms A Cell About The Same Length As
Its body,
plastering the walls so as to be quite thin and smooth inside.
When this is finished, all except
A round hole, it brings seven or eight
caterpillars or spiders, each of which is rendered insensible, but not killed,
by the fluid from its sting. These it deposits in the cell,
and then one of its own larvae, which, as it grows, finds food quite fresh.
The insects are in a state of coma, but the presence of vitality
prevents putridity, or that drying up which would otherwise take place
in this climate. By the time the young insect is full grown and its wings
completely developed, the food is done. It then pierces the wall of its cell
at the former door, or place last filled up by its parent,
flies off, and begins life for itself. The plasterer is a most useful insect,
as it acts as a check on the inordinate increase of caterpillars and spiders.
It may often be seen with a caterpillar or even a cricket much larger
than itself, but they lie perfectly still after the injection of chloroform,
and the plasterer, placing a row of legs on each side of the body,
uses both legs and wings in trailing the victim along.
The fluid in each case is, I suppose, designed to cause insensibility,
and likewise act as an antiseptic, the death of the victims
being without pain.
Without these black soldier-ants the country would be overrun
by the white ants; they are so extremely prolific, and nothing can exceed
the energy with which they work. They perform a most important part
in the economy of nature by burying vegetable matter as quickly
beneath the soil as the ferocious red ant does dead animal substances.
The white ant keeps generally out of sight, and works under galleries
constructed by night to screen them from the observation of birds.
At some given signal, however, I never could ascertain what,
they rush out by hundreds, and the sound of their mandibles
cutting grass into lengths may be heard like a gentle wind
murmuring through the leaves of the trees. They drag these pieces
to the doors of their abodes, and after some hours' toil leave off work,
and many of the bits of grass may be seen collected around the orifice.
They continue out of sight for perhaps a month, but they are never idle.
On one occasion, a good bundle of grass was laid down for my bed
on a spot which was quite smooth and destitute of plants.
The ants at once sounded the call to a good supply of grass.
I heard them incessantly nibbling and carrying away all that night;
and they continued all next day (Sunday), and all that night too,
with unabated energy. They had thus been thirty-six hours at it,
and seemed as fresh as ever.
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