[Footnote 1:  Mr. Jerdan, in a series of papers in the thirteenth volume of the Annals of Natural History, has described forty-seven species of ants in Southern India.  But M. Nietner has recently forwarded to the Berlin Museum upwards of seventy species taken by him in Ceylon, chiefly in the western province and the vicinity of Colombo.  Of these many are identical with those noted by Mr. Jerdan as belonging to the Indian continent.  One (probably Drepanognathus saltator of Jerdan) is described by M. Nietner as occasionally “moving by jumps of several inches at a spring.”]

[Footnote 2:  Dr. DAVY, in a paper on Tropical Plants, has introduced the following passage relative to the purification of sugar by ants: 

“If the juice of the sugar-cane—­the common syrup as expressed by the mill—­be exposed to the air, it gradually evaporates, yielding a light-brown residue, like the ordinary muscovado sugar of the best quality.  If not protected, it is presently attacked by ants, and in a short time is, as it were, converted into white crystalline sugar, the ants having refined it by removing the darker portion, probably preferring that part from it containing azotized matter.  The negroes, I may remark, prefer brown sugar to white:  they say its sweetening power is greater; no doubt its nourishing quality is greater, and therefore as an article of diet deserving of preference.  In refining sugar as in refining salt (coarse bay salt containing a little iodine), an error may be committed in abstracting matter designed by nature for a useful purpose.”]

But the assaults of the ants are not confined to dead animals alone, they attack equally such small insects as they can overcome, or find disabled by accidents or wounds; and it is not unusual to see some hundreds of them surrounding a maimed beetle, or a bruised cockroach, and hurrying it along in spite of its struggles.  I have, on more than one occasion, seen a contest between, them and one of the viscous ophidians, Caecilia, glutinosa[1], a reptile resembling an enormous earthworm, common in the Kandyan hills, of an inch in diameter, and nearly two feet in length.  On these occasions it would seem as if the whole community had been summoned and turned out for such a prodigious effort; they surround their victim literally in tens of thousands, inflicting wounds on all parts, and forcing it along towards their nest in spite of resistance.  In one instance to which I was a witness, the conflict lasted for the latter part of a day, but towards evening the Coecilia was completely exhausted, and in the morning it had totally disappeared, having been carried away either whole or piecemeal by its assailants.

[Footnote 1:  See ante, p. 317.]