They are a sad pest to the agriculturist and a great nuisance when they get inside the houses. At Buenos Ayres they are very troublesome: I tried myself every means in vain to get rid of them; their ingenuity always baffled us; no contrivance could keep anything in the shape of sweetmeats or dried fruits or such things out of their clutches; and as to the quantity of sugar they would carry off in a very short time, it was incredible: we thought to escape them by placing our stores upon tables, the legs of which were surrounded by water, but they threw straws and sticks into the water, and so made themselves bridges to cross by. If we hung them from the ceiling they climbed the walls and descended by the ropes which suspended them. In our garden they committed terrible depredations; and in the summer-season it was always necessary to keep a couple of men constantly employed for the sole purpose of destroying their nests. We observed that they could not exist in the sun; so that, if a basin of sugar were half filled with them, as was constantly the case, by putting it into the sun it was presently cleared of every one of them. The Jesuit father Guevara, in his account of Paraguay, speaks of a species not noticed by Azara, found about Villa Rica, which deposits upon certain plants small globules of white wax, which the inhabitants collect to make candles of. The utility they are of in this respect, he says, in some measure compensates for the damage they do to the husbandman. Against their depredations, St. Simon and St. Jude, and St. Bonifacio[53], have been by turns elected in due form to be the special guardians and protectors of all good Catholics. Fortunately, however, in those regions where these insects most abound, an all-wise Providence has also placed a most remarkable animal--formed, as it would appear, expressly for the purpose of destroying them and preventing their overrunning the land--the tamandua, or, as we call it, the ant-bear. I hardly know any animal which exhibits more striking evidence of design on the part of the Creator: slow and sluggish in all its movements, without power of escape, and apparently without the ordinary means of self-defence, its long trumpet-shaped snout solely formed to contain the singular prehensory organ with which it is furnished for the purpose of taking its diminutive prey, being entirely destitute of anything like the teeth of other animals; it would be speedily exterminated by the beasts of prey which abound where it is found, were it not--as if to compensate for these deficiencies--providentially supplied with strong sharp claws, and such courage and muscular power to use them, as enables it to defy every assailant. When attacked it throws itself upon its back, and in that posture will make so desperate a resistance, that it is a match either for the jaguar or tiger, its fiercest enemies.