“The accounts of these same animals, in other climates, sufficiently shew what formidable power they acquire when the efforts of numbers are combined.  Mr Malovat mentions, in his account of his travels through the forest of Guyana, his arriving at a savannah, extending in a level plain beyond the visible horizon, and in which he beheld a structure that appeared to have been raised by human industry.  M. de Prefontaine, who accompanied him in the expedition, informed him that it was an ant-hill, which they could not approach without danger of being devoured.  They passed some of the paths frequented by the labourers, which belonged to a very large species of black ants.  The nest they had constructed, which had the form of a truncated pyramid, appeared to be from fifteen to twenty feet in height, on a base of thirty or forty feet.  He was told that when the new settlers, in their attempt to clear the country, happened to meet with any of these fortresses, they were obliged to abandon the spot, unless they could muster sufficient forces to lay regular siege to the enemy.  This they did by digging a circular trench all round the nest, and filling it with a large quantity of dried wood, to the whole of which they fire at the same time, by lighting it in different parts all round the circumference.  While the entrenchments are blazing, the edifice may be destroyed by firing at it with cannon; and the ants being by this means dispersed, have no avenue for escape except through the flames, in which they perish.”  It might be worthy the attention of philosophers to enquire, what general purposes in the economy of Nature these wonder-working animals accomplish.  The labours of certain other creatures, there is every reason to believe, are destined to raise up habitable islands in various parts of the ocean.  May not these small architects be employed in fitting certain soils for the growth of vegetable substances?  There seems, indeed, to exist in our world a living spirit, or principle, continually operating in the production of creatures, and places suitable for them, to compensate the loss of those which an irrevocable law of the great Fabricator has doomed to successive destruction, as if He chose to manifest the glory of His wisdom and power, by creating new existences, rather than by preserving the old ones.—­E.]

The sea in this country is much more liberal of food to the inhabitants than the land; and though fish is not quite so plenty here as they generally are in higher latitudes, yet we seldom hauled the seine without taking from fifty to two hundred weight.  They are of various sorts; but, except the mullet, and some of the shell-fish, none of them are known in Europe:  Most of them are palatable, and some are very delicious.  Upon the shoals and reef there are incredible numbers of the finest green turtle in the world, and oysters of various kinds, particularly the rock-oyster and the pearl-oyster.  The gigantic cockles have been mentioned already; besides which, there are sea-crayfish, or lobsters, and crabs:  Of these, however, we saw only the shells.  In the rivers and salt creeks there are aligators.