underground, and are used only in the heat of the day, or during a storm. When they grow hungry, the long file spreads itself through the forest in a front line, and attacks and devours all it overtakes with a fury which is quite irresistible. The elephant and gorilla fly before this attack. The black men run for their lives. Every animal that lives in their line of march is chased. They seem to understand, and act upon, the tactics of Napoleon, and concentrate, with great speed, their heaviest forces upon the point of attack. In an incredibly short space of time the mouse, or dog, or leopard, or deer is overwhelmed, killed, eaten, and the bare skeleton only remains.” These terrible insects travel night and day. “Many a time,” says Du Chaillu, “have I been awakened out of a sleep and obliged to rush from the hut and into the water, to save my life, and after all, suffered intolerable agony from the bites of the advance-guard, who had got into my clothes. When they enter a house they clear it of all living things. Cockroaches are devoured in an instant. Rats and mice spring round the room in vain. An overwhelming force of ants kills a strong rat in less than a minute, in spite of the most frantic struggles, and in less than another minute its bones are stripped. Every living thing in the house is devoured. When on their march the insect-world flies before them, and I have often had the approach of a bashikonay army heralded to me by this means. Wherever they go they make a clean sweep, even ascending to the tops of the highest trees in pursuit of their prey. Their manner of attack is an impetuous leap. Instantly the strong pincers are fastened and they only let go when the piece gives way. At such times this little animal seems animated by a kind of fury which causes it to disregard entirely its own safety, and to seek only the conquest of its prey. The bite is very painful.” This latter statement it is easy to believe from the figure given in Du Chaillu’s book of one of these driver, or bashikonay ants. It is drawn twice the size of the real insect, but, even so, this would make the latter at least as large as a wasp. The head is enormous, larger than the thorax and abdomen—which make the body—together, and from it a huge pair of curved and pointed mandibles project and cross each other at the tips. When fairly covered with such creatures the effect would be that of thousands of tiny pincers, all tearing out pieces of flesh at the same time. No wonder that the negroes who are naked, or nearly so, run for their lives. In old times, Du Chaillu tells us, native criminals used to be tied down in the path of these terrible ants, to be torn to pieces and devoured by them—a shocking piece of cruelty which one is glad to know even then (more than forty years ago) and amongst savages, was a thing of the past. This terrible fate, however, must sometimes overtake those who are too old or ailing