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ANTS AND VEGETATION.

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way account for so wide-spread and invaluable a sense having become permanently lost, in creatures which still 10am about and hunt for prey very much as do their follows who can see.

Special Relations between Ants and Vegetation.---Attention has recently been called to the very remarkable relations existing between some trees and shrubs and the ants which dwell upon them. In the Malay Islands are several curious shrubs belonging to the Cinchonaceæ, which grow parasitically on other trees, and whose swollen stems are veritable ants' nests. When very

young the stems are like small, irregul: e prikly tubers, in the hollows of which ants establish Phen, selves; and these in time grow into irregular muses the size of large gourds, completely honeycombed with the cells of ants. In America there are some analagous cases occurring in several families of plants, one of the most remarkable being that of certain Melastomas which have a kind of pouch formed by an enlargement of the petiole of the leaf, and which is inhabited by a colony of small ants. The hollow stems of the Cecropias (curious trees with pale bark and large palmate leaves which are white beneath) are always tenanted by ants, which make small entrance holes through the bark; but here there seems no special adaptation to the wants of the insect. In a species of Acacia observed by Mr. Belt, the thorns are immensely large and hollow, and are always tenanted by ants. When young these thorns are soft and full of a sweetish pulpy substance, so that when the ants first take possession they find a store of food in their house. Afterwards they find a special provision of honey-glands on the leaf-stalks, and also small yellow fruit-like bodies

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TROPICAL NATURE, AND OTHER ESSAYS.

which are eaten by the ants; and this supply of food permanently attaches them to the plant. Mr. Belt believes, after much careful observation, that these ants protect the plant they live on from leaf-eating insects, especially from the destructive Saüba ants, that they are in fact a standing army kept for the protection of the plant! This view is supported by the fact that other plants--Passion-flowers, for example-have honeysecreting glands on the young leaves and on the sepals of the flower-buds which constantly attract a small black ant. If this view is correct, we see that the need of escaping from the destructive attacks of the leafcutting ants has led to strange modifications in many plants. Those in which the foliage was especially

attractive to these enemies were soon weeded out unless variations occurred which tended to preserve them. Hence the curious phenomenon of insects specially attracted to certain lants to protect them from other insects; and the existence of the destructive leaf-cutting ant in America will thus explain why these specially modified plants are so much more abundant there than in the Old World, where no ants with equally destructive habits appear to exist.

Wasps and Bees.-These insects are excessively numerous in the tropies, and, from their large size, their brilliant colours, and their great activity, they are sure to attract attention. Handsomest of all, perhaps, are the Scoliada, whose large and rather broad hairy bodies, often two inches long, are richly banded with yellow or orange. The Pompilida comprise an immense number of large and handsome insects, with rich blue-black bodies and wings and exceedingly long legs. They may often

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be seen in the forests dragging along large spiders, beetles, or other insects they have captured. Some of the smaller species enter houses and build earthen cells which they store with small green spiders rendered torpid by stinging, to feed the larvae. The Eumenida are beautiful wasps with very long pedunculated bodies, which build papery cones covering a few cells in which the eggs are deposited. Among the bees the Xylocopas,

True

wood-boring bees, are remarkable. They resemble large humble-bees, but have broad, flat, shining bodies, either black or banded with bluc; and they often bore large cylindrical holes in the posts of houses. honey-bees are chiefly remarkable in the East for their large semi-circular combs suspended from the branches of the loftiest trees without any covering. From these exposed nests large quantities of wax and honey are obtained, while the larvae afford a rich feast to the natives of Borneo, Timor, and other islands where bees abound. They are very pugnacious, and, when disturbed will follow the intruders for miles, stinging severely.

Orthoptera and other Insects.-Next to the butterflies and ants, the insects that are most likely to attract the attention of the stranger in the tropics are the various forms of Mantida and Phasmida, some of which are remarkable for their strange attitudes and bright colours ; while others are among the most singular of known insects, owing to their resemblance to sticks and leaves. The Mantida-usually called "praying insects," from their habit of sitting with their long fore-feet held up as if in prayer-are really tigers among insects, lying in wait for their prey, which they seize with their powerful serrated fore-feet. They are usually so coloured as to

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TROPICAL NATURE, AND OTHER ESSAYS.

resemble the foliage among which they live, and as they sit quite motionless, they are not easily perceived.

The Phasmida are perfectly inoffensive leaf-eating inseets of very varied forms; some being broad and leaf-like, while others are long and cylindrical so as to resemble sticks, whence they are often called walking-stick insects. The imitative resemblance of some of these insects to the plants on which they live is marvellous. The true leaf

insects of the East, forming the genus Phyllium, are the size of a moderate leaf, which their large wing-covers and the dilated margins of the head, thorax and legs cause them exactly to resemble. The veining of the wings, and their green tint, exactly corresponds to that of the leaves of their food-plant; and as they rest motionless during the day, only feeding at night, they the mote easily escape detection. In Java they are often kept alive on a branch of the guava tree; and it is a common thing for a stranger, when asked to look at this curious. insect, to inquire where it is, and on being told that it is close under his eyes, to maintain that there is no insect at all, but only a branch with green leaves.

The larger wingless stick-insects are often eight inches to a foot long. They are abundant in the Moluccas ; hanging on the shrubs that line the forest-paths; and they resemble sticks so exactly, in colour, in the small rugosities of the bark, in the knots and small branches, imitated by the joints of the legs, which are either pressed close to the body, or stuck out at random, that it is absolutely impossible, by the eye alone, to distinguish the real dead twigs which fall down from the trees overhead from the living insects. The writer has often looked at them in doubt, and has been obliged to use the sense of

LEAF AND STICK INSECTS.

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touch to determine the point. Some are small and slender like the most delicate twigs; others again have wings; and it is curious that these wings are often beautifully coloured, generally bright pink, sometimes yellow, and sometimes finely banded with black; but when at rest these wings fold up so as to be completely concealed under the narrow wing-covers, and the whole insect is then green or brown, and almost invisible among the twigs or foliage. To increase the resemblance to vegetation, some of these Phasmas have small green processes in various parts of their bodies looking exactly like moss. These inhabit damp forests both in the Malay islands and in America, and they are so marvellously like moss-grown twigs that the closest examination is needed to satisfy oneself that it is really a living insect we are looking at.

Many of the locusts are equally well-disguised, some resembling green leaves, others those that are brown and dead; and the latter often have small transparent spots on the wings, looking like holes eaten through them. That these disguises deceive their natural enemies is certain, for otherwise the Phasmide would soon be exterminated. They are large and sluggish, and very soft and succulent; they have no means of defence or of flight, and they are eagerly devoured by numbers of birds, especially by the numerous cuckoo tribe, whose stomachs are often full of them; yet numbers of them escape destruction, and this can only be due to their vegetable disguises. Mr. Belt records a curious instance of the actual operation of this kind of defence in a leaf-like locust, which remained perfectly quiescent in the midst of a host of insectivorous ants, which ran over it without finding out that it was an insect and not a leaf! It might have

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