ANTS TWO INCHES LONG

Evening Star, Issue 23718, 28 October 1940, Page 6

ANTS TWO INCHES LONG

EXPEDITION TO DOYLE’S ’LOST WORLD' What would you do if you broke a bottle containing about 50 Paraponera and Dinoponera and they all started to dash round the room? (writes Webster Evans in ‘ John o’ London’s Weekly ’). Dr Paul Zahl, the American naturalist and explorer, admits that he was panic-stricken when he did this in the bedroom of his hotel in Para, the Brazilian rubber town. For, although Paraponera and Dinoponera are merely ants, they are as formidable as their names. They live in the South American jungle, and are the largest and fiercest of ants, Dinoponera grandis ranging between one and two inches in length. Their sting is in proportion to their size; among the natives of Peru Paraponera is called the “ 24-hour ant ” or tho “ four-sting ant,” since it is thought that its sting will paralyse a man for 24 hours, and that stings from four ants will be fatal. No wonder ? then, that Dr Zahl felt a little worried when the contents of his bottle began to spread over his bedroom floor. He grabbed an empty bottle and some forceps, he tells us in ‘To the Lost World,’ “ and quickly started picking up the ants one at a time and thrusting them back into the bottle. In my unreasoning haste I failed to see one of the beasts climb up my leg, and before I (knew she was there or what had happened her mandibles had viciously dug into my skin and her abdominal hypodermic been inserted deep into the tissue. I brushed her off furiously and hurried on with my task.” TWO HOURS OF AGONY. The pain, however, soon became so severe that he had to give up the fight temporally. He closed the windows, blocked the crack under the door with a towel, to prevent any of the ants from invading the hotel, and retired to his bathroom. For two hours, he says, he sat in silent agony as the pulsations of his leg slowly diminished; — “ When the pain had subsided sufficiently to allow clear thought and action, I ventured back into the bedroom. The freed ants now had scattered everywhere—on the walls, on the mosquito netting over the bed, on the desk. I even found one looking at himself in the dressing-table mirror.” He rounded them up one by one and popped them in the bottle. ■ When he retired for the night ho was careful to see that the mosquito net was securely tucked round the mattress —and he wasn’t thinking of mosquitoes! THE MYSTERIOUS MOUNTAIN. In addition to his researches into the habits of Paraponera and Dinoponera, Dr Zahl made an expedition to the little-known Mount Roraima, on the borders of British Guiana, Venezuela, and Brazil. Mount Roraima has been identified with the mysterious mountain described by Conan Doyle in his novel, ‘ The Lost World ’ —that nightmarhh place where pterodactyls, dinosaurs, and other survivals from prehistoric times roamed at large. Dr Zahl did not expect to find anything of this sort, but thought that the mountain was worth a visit. This is what he and his companions'saw as they approached Mount. Roraima from the foothills: “ Half hidden in clouds, was a cold, incredibly massive , r protrusion .jof rocks extending from the level on which we stood directly and perpendicularly upwards for a towering 2,000 ft —a fortress wall several miles long and half a mile high, brutal, devoid of vegetation, gigantic, inhospitable. That is the picture of Mount Roraima, the Lost World, tho Mother of Rivers.” Mother of Rivers is the native name for Mount Roraima, and when Dr Zahl began to climb it he soon found the reason for this. Everything, he tells us, dripped water: “ Under the rocks, around our feet, dripping off our clothes, pouring down the fern-stems, dripping from the moss festoons, and all flowing down to be reorganised into the Kukenaam River and so out to th 6 Orinoco. On the other side of the mountain the same drainage was occurring, but there the water would find its way to the sea by way of tlie Essequibo, and, in the south, the Amazon.” BLACKBERRIES AND A BUTTERFLY. As they climbed higher up ; the vegetation became more sparse j in one spot they were delighted to find a belt of blackberry bushes, full of fruit. This was the first fresh fruit that Dr Zahl had tasted since he had been in the tropics. The blackberries were a good augury. On top of the mountain, instead of the sinister world of Conan Doyle’s novel, they came upon an idyllic scene of peace: “ Here, in incredible contrast to all else about, was a blue pool fed by a gurgling brook. Enough rock erosion had occurred to furnish soil for clean, beautiful mosses, for lovely green plants bearing fragrant and highly coloured flowers. Grasses filled the interstices, and dancing among it'all was a lonesome butterfly.” No pterodactyls, no .mastodons; just a butterfly. . . .’ No wonder Dr Zahl is so carried away that ,he begins to talk about Pan and Narcissus and Oberon. In any case, he and his companions were glad to sit there, drying their clothes in the sun, nearly 10,000 ft up in the clouds. A RACE WITH THE MIST. Coming down they had some nasty moments when they were caught in the clouds that usually envelop Mount Roraima. By now, too, it was getting late, and they completed the final and most difficult part of the descent just as the sun was setting. As they looked back they could see the mists blotting out the ‘cliff-face and moving after them “ Our start had been a good one, however, and the friendly moon was out now and we could run over the grass-covered surface of the smooth foothills. We reached camp just as the mists were rolling down and beginning to envc 1 v us; hut here in our kingdom, in our hammocks, beside our fire, we cou'l laugh at the mountain and its clutching fingers.” Even on the wind-swept summit of Mount Roraima Dr Zahl had been on the look-out for his ants. But the specimens he found there were tiny compared with the mammoths of the lower jungles. It would somehow have been more fitting—and in the Conan Doyle tradition—if Paraponera and Dinoponera had been waiting to welcome the explorers on top of the Lost World. However Dr Zahl was satisfied, and we should be, too, for his story is quite exciting enough as it is—even if the terrors of the jungle were no worse than those of the hotel bedroom.