There are many species and incredible numbers both of creeping and flying ants in Paraguay. The worst and most stinging kind are the least in size, and of a red colour. They carry off sugar, honey, and every thing sweet, so that you have need of much ingenuity to defend provision of this kind from them. From eating sweet things they increase their bile, and acquire a subtle venom. As soon as they get upon the skin, they create a pustule, which lasts many days, and causes severe pain. To this very small species of ants, I subjoin the largest I had an opportunity of seeing, which are formidable on account of their undermining buildings. They make burrows with infinite labour, under churches and houses, digging deep sinuous meanders in the earth, and exerting their utmost strength to throw out the loosened sods. Having got wings they fly off in all directions, on the approach of heavy showers, with the same ill fortune as Icarus, but with this difference, that he perished in the sea, they on the ground, to which they fall when their wings are wetted by the rain. Moreover those holes in the earth, by which the ants used first to pass, admit the rain water, which inundates the caves of the ants, and undermines the building, causing the wooden beams that uphold the wall and roof, first to give way, and unless immediately supported, to fall along with the house. This is a common spectacle in Paraguay. The whole hill on which St. Joachim was built was covered with ant-hills, and full of subterranean cavities. Our house, and the one adjoining, suffered much from these insects. The chief altar was rendered useless for many days: for, it being rainy weather, the lurking ants flew in swarms from their caves, and not being able to support a long flight, fell upon the priest, the altar, and sacred utensils, defiling every thing. Ten outlets by which they broke from their caves being closed up, next day they opened twenty more. One evening there arose a violent storm, with horrible thunder and lightning. A heavy shower seemed to have converted our court-yard into a sloping lake, the wall itself withstanding the course of the waters. My companion betook himself to my apartment. Mean time an Indian, the churchwarden, arrives, announcing that the floor of the church was beginning to gape, and the wall to open and be inclined. I snatched up a lamp and ran to the place, but had hardly quitted the threshold of my door, when I perceived a gap in the earth; and before I was aware of any danger, sunk up to the shoulders in a pit, in the very place of the chief altar, but scrambled out of it by the help of the churchwarden, as quickly as I had got in, for under that altar the ants seemed to have made their metropolis: the cavern was many feet long and wide, so that it had the appearance of a wine-cellar. As often as earth was thrown in by the Indians to fill it, so often was it dug out by the ants. In this