[Footnote 1:  Xylocopa tenuiscapa, Westw.; X. latipes, Drury.]

Ants.—­As to ants, I apprehend that, notwithstanding their numbers and familiarity, information is very imperfect relative to the varieties and habits of these marvellous insects in Ceylon.[1] In point of multitude it is scarcely an exaggeration to apply to them the figure of “the sands of the sea.”  They are everywhere; in the earth, in the houses, and in the trees; they are to be seen in every room and cupboard, and almost on every plant in the jungle.  To some of the latter they are, perhaps, attracted by the sweet juices secreted by the aphides and coccidae; and such is the passion of the ants for sugar, and their wonderful faculty of discovering it, that the smallest particle of a substance containing it, though placed in the least conspicuous position, is quickly covered with them, where not a single one may have been visible a moment before.  But it is not sweet substances alone that they attack; no animal or vegetable matter comes amiss to them; no aperture appears too small to admit them; it is necessary to place everything which it may be desirable to keep free from their invasion, under the closest cover, or on tables with cups of water under every foot.  As scavengers, they are invaluable; and as ants never sleep, but work without cessation, during the night as well as by day, every particle of decaying vegetable or putrid animal matter is removed with inconceivable speed and certainty.  In collecting shells, I have been able to turn this propensity to good account; by placing them within their reach, the ants in a few days will remove every vestige of the mollusc from the innermost and otherwise inaccessible whorls; thus avoiding all risk of injuring the enamel by any mechanical process.

[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 “moving by jumps of several inches at a spring.”]

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, Coecilia glutinosa[1], a reptile resembling an enormous earthworm, common in the Kandyan hills, of an inch in diameter, and nearly two feet in length.  It