STRANGER THAN FICTION.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue XIII, 31 March 1894, Page 294

STRANGER THAN FICTION.

Professor C. Stewart, in a recent lecture at the London Institute, carried his audience off to the verdurous forests of tropical America in a description of the life and habits of the leaf catting ants. They dwell in tumuli, at a depth of sft or 6ft below the surface of the earth. Each of the chambers there found is about two thirds full of what is apparently brown snuff, in the midst of which swarms of small ants are busily running about engaged in their duties. The * snuff,’ however, is nothing else than a compost formed by masticating the leaves of trees. The leaves are not need as food. The compost is used for the purpose of growing on its surface a special kind of fungus, which is the special food of the ant, and that with whicn in particular it feeds its young. A crop of fungus is kept in perpetual cultivation on the leaf mould soil. The eggs, after they are hatched by the queen ant, are tended with marvellous devotion by a special race of small ants. The fully-grown chrysalis is assisted out of its case with the greatest surgical care ; each limb as it is presented is carefully and affectionately * massaged ’ and shampooed. The newly born infant is carefully tended in its first toddling steps until it can bite off and eat fungus on its own account. Equally marvellous are the ways of the much larger and more powerful class which goes forth in a continual stream, climbs trees, bites off whole leaves, and carries them back to the caravans for mastication by the nursing ants. The stream of harvesters is superintended and directed by one or two powerful fellows, who do not work themselves, but merely direct the labour of others. Even * division of labour ’ is understood by these creatures. One gang will remain up in the trees chopping off the leaves ; another will effect the removal of the fallen material from the ground beneath. Perhaps the most human feature about the nursing community is that they get an occasional ‘day out’ for exercise, amusing themselves during their holiday by running about the ground and occasionally taking a ride home on the top of some leaf borne by their larger and more powerful kindred. Naturally, the professor pointed out, the foliage was devastated terribly by them. But there is, it appears, one species of acacia which defies their attacks by a device which it appears to have developed on its own account. This device, which was described in a series of excellent illustrations, is nothing less than keeping a special breed of ants, housed and fed on the branches, which fiercely repel any of the leaf eating intruders. The acacia has * developed ’ special houses for the protecting ants, distils plenty of honey and oil, and also provides fountains of nitrogenous or fleshforming nutriment on the points of its leaves. There is everything an ant rrquiies from birth to death on a single branch, and all without injuring the plant itself. The virulence of these ants in repelling the attacks of other anta was described as intense.