To check the ravages of the coffee bug (Lecanium coffeoe, Walker), which for some years past has devastated some of the plantations in Ceylon, the experiment was made of introducing the red ants, who feed greedily on the Coccus.  But the remedy threatened to be attended with some inconvenience, for the Malabar Coolies, with bare and oiled skins, were so frequently and fiercely assaulted by the ants as to endanger their stay on the estates.

The ants which burrow in the ground in Ceylon are generally, but not invariably, black, and some of them are of considerable size.  One species, about the third of an inch in length, is abundant in the hills, and especially about the roots of trees, where they pile up the earth in circular heaps round the entrance to their nests, and in doing this I have observed a singular illustration of their instinct.  To carry up each particle of sand by itself would be an endless waste of labour, and to carry two or more loose ones securely would be to them embarrassing, if not impossible; they therefore overcome the difficulty by glueing together with their saliva so much earth or sand as is sufficient for a burden, and each one may be seen hurrying up from below with his load, carrying it to the top of the circular heap outside, and throwing it over, whilst it is so strongly attached as to roll to the bottom without breaking asunder.

The ants I have been here describing are inoffensive, differing in this particular from the Dimiya and another of similar size and ferocity, which is called by the Singhalese Kaddiya; and they have a legend illustrative of their alarm for the bites of the latter, to the effect that the cobra de capello invested the Kaddiya with her own venom in admiration of the singular courage displayed by these little creatures.[1]

[Footnote 1:  KNOX’S Historical Relation of Ceylon, pt i. ch vi. p. 23.]

LEPIDOPTERA. Butterflies.—­Butterflies in the interior of the island are comparatively rare, and, contrary to the ordinary belief, they are seldom to be seen in the sunshine, They frequent the neighbourhood of the jungle, and especially the vicinity of the rivers and waterfalls, living mainly in the shade of the moist foliage, and returning to it in haste after the shortest flights, as if their slender bodies were speedily dried up and exhausted by the exposure to the intense heat.

Among the largest and most gaudy of the Ceylon Lepidoptera is the great black and yellow butterfly (Ornithoptera darsius, Gray); the upper wings, of which measure six inches across, are of deep velvet black, the lower, ornamented by large particles of satiny yellow, through which the sunlight passes, and few insects can compare with it in beauty, as it hovers over the flowers of the heliotrope, which furnish the favourite food of the perfect fly, although the caterpillar feeds on the aristolochia and the betel leaf and suspends its chrysalis from its drooping tendrils.