unless you instantly make your escape, sting you all over. This happened so frequently in the Guarany colonies, that we were obliged to burn a candle at night: for lighted sheets of paper thrown upon the swarm, are the only means of driving them away. The Portugueze have an old saying, that the ants are queens of Brazil. Certainly we have found them the sovereigns of Paraguay. There may be said to be more trouble in conquering these insects, than all the savages put together; for every contrivance hitherto devised serves only to put them to flight, not banish them effectually. Should you hire workmen at a great expense to throw fire upon the caves of the ants, and destroy their eggs, fresh ones will be found next day in other parts of the garden. If swine's dung, chalk, urine, or wild marjoram be put into their cave, they will depart, but only to dig themselves fresh habitations in the neighbourhood. Sulphur is superior to other remedies, and the way in which it is to be used we learnt from the Portugueze. You seek out the principal lurking-place of the ants, lay a chafing dish of lighted coals in the largest opening by which they enter the earth, blow them into a flame, and add sulphur to make a smoke. You carefully stop up the other openings, through which you perceive the smoke issue, with mud, that the sulphureous smoke may not be permitted to escape. You then light all the sulphur you have at hand, by means of bellows, and the smoke filling the whole cave will suffocate all the ants that lurk there. This has been successfully practised by many persons in Paraguay. But if sulphur be wanting in these solitudes, or patience to use it, then grapes and the productions of the trees and plains must fail also. The ants will devastate every thing, and elude all the arts of the cultivator, unless destroyed by the smoke of sulphur.