The Naturalist in Nicaragua

position of S

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h the brook winding almost round it, and, beyond that, encircled by an amphitheatre of low hills in the hollow of which it lies. The road to the mines runs through it, and forms the main street, having on each side thatched stores and irregularly built houses. The inhabitants, about three hundred in number, are entirely dependent on the mines around, there being no cultivation or any other employment in the immediate neighbourhood. The people are of a mixed descent, in which Indian blood predominates, then Spanish with a slight admixture of the Negro element, whilst amongst the rising generation many fair-haired children can claim paternity amongst the numerous German and English workmen that have been employed at the mines. The store-keepers form the aristocracy of the village. They are indolent; lounging about, or lying smoking in their hammocks the greater part of the day, but generally civil and polite. They are particular in their dress, and may often be seen in faultless European costume, silk umbrella in hand, in twos or threes, taking a short quiet walk up the valley. The lower class o

. Amongst the half-breeds, especially where the Negro element exists, there are often quarrellings and rows, when they

s; but the Negro seldom engages either in that or any other settled employment, unless compelled as a slave, in which condition he is happy and thoughtless. I do not defend slavery, but I believe it to be a greater curse to the masters than to the slaves, more deteriorating to the former than to the latter. The Spaniards at first enslaved the Indians, but they died away so rapidly that in a very short time the indigenes of the whole of the once-populous islands of the West Indies were exterminated, and large numbers of Indians were carried off from the mainland to supply their places, but died with equal rapidity; so that the Spaniards found

t as wives, for which they do not seem to suffer in the estimation of their neighbours. This is greatly due in Nicaragua, as it is throughout Central and South America, to the pro

SIONER'S HOUSE A

g up the valley from the village, on the right hand side, about fifty yards from the road, on a grass-covered slope, stand the houses of the commissioner and cashier, in the latter of which the medical officer also lives. The former, a large, white-washed, square, two-storied, wooden house, with verandahs round three sides of it, and commu

wn from the hill, in which was a perennial spring of limpid water. I had the logs and rubbish gathered together and burnt, put a light fence round it, and formed a small vegetable, fruit, and flower garden. The mango and avocado trees had not come into bearing before I left; but pineapples, figs, grenadillas, bananas, pumpkins, plantains, papaws, and chioties fruited abundantly. The last named i

reat many varieties of them, and they are cooked in many ways-boiled, baked, made into pastry, or eaten as a fruit. The varieties differ not only in their fruits, but in the colour of their leaves and stems; the natives can distinguish them without seeing the fruit, and have names for each, by which they are known throughout all Central America, Mexico, and Peru. These names are of Spani

als and Plants under Domestication" volume 2 page 169.) The natives made sugar from the green stems of the maize. Humboldt thinks that some species of plantain were indigenous to America; but it seems incredible that such an important fruit could have been overlooked by the e

f bananas, pineapples, and bread-fruit are almost seedless, it is probable that the nutriment that would have been required for the formation of the seeds has been expended in producing larger and more succulent fruits. We find some varieties of oranges, which also have been cultivated from very early ages, producing fruits without seeds; but as these trees are propagated from seeds, these varieties could not become so sterile as those just mentioned. There can be no doubt that the seedless varieties of banana, bread-fruits, and pineapples have been propagated for h

d its eggs in the green bark, and produced white grubs that mined into the stem. I had to dig down to them with a knife to extricate them and prevent them destroying the young trees. We were surrounded at a

resembles in perfume. It makes fine tarts and puddings, being somewhat like the gooseberry in taste. I had much difficulty in preserving it

t vigour, and produced very large and fine melon-like fruits. The green fru

also in their leaves and flowers; cabbages, kidney-beans, pumpkins, yuccas (Jatropha manihot), quequisqu

ical America; but none of them frequented the flowers of the scarlet runner, and to that circumstance we may safely ascribe its sterility. An analogous case has been long known. The vanilla plant (Vanilla planifolia) has been introduced from tropical America into India, but though it grows well, and flowers, it never fruits without artificial aid. It is the same in the hothouses of Europe. Dr. Morren, of Liege, has shown that, if artificially fertilised, every flower will produce fruit; and ascribes its sterility to the absence, in Europe and India, of some insect that in America carries the pollen from one flower to another.* (* Taylor's "Annals of Natural History" volume 3 page 1.) When those int

all were the leaf-cutting ants, and I had to wage a continual warfare against them. During this contest I gained much information regard

UTTING

them is on encountering their paths on the outskirts of the forest crowded with the ants; one lot carrying off the pieces of leaves, each piece about the size of a sixpence, and held up vertically between the jaws of the ant; another lot hurrying along in an opposite direction empty-handed, but eager to get loaded with their leafy burdens. If he follows this last division, it will lead him to some young trees or shrubs, up which the ants mount; and then each one, stationing itself on the edge of a leaf, commences to make a circular cut, with its scissor-like jaws, from the edge, its hinder feet being the centre on which it turns. When the piece is nearly

he ants do not make their nests, because, I believe, the ventilation of their underground galleries, about which they are very particular, would be interfered with, and perhaps to avoid the drip from the trees. It is on the outskirts of the forest, or around clearings, or near wide roads that let in the sun, that these formicariums are generally found. Numerous round tunnels, varying fr

point, and disappearing down the numerous tunnelled passages. The out-going, empty-handed hosts are partly concealed amongst the bulky burdens of the incomers, and can only be distinguished by looking closely amongst them. The ceaseless, toiling hosts impress one with the

oyer. The leaf-cutting ants are confined to tropical America; and we can easily understand that trees and vegetables introduced from foreign lands where these ants are unknown could not have acquired, excepting accidentally, and without any reference to the ants, any protection against their attacks, and now they are most eagerly sought by them. Amongst introduced trees, some species of even the same genus are more acceptable than others. Thus, in the orange tribe, the lime (Citrus lemonum) is less liked than the other species; it is the only one that I ever found growing really wild in Central America: and I have sometimes thought that even in the short time since the lime was first introduced, about three hundred years ago, a wild variety may have arisen, less subject to the attacks of the ants than the cultivated variety; for in many parts I saw them growin

respecting the means I took to protect my own garden against their attacks, especially as the continual war

ifications extended so far, and to so great a depth, while the ants were continually at work making fresh excavations, that it would be an immense task to eradicate them by such means; and notwithstanding all the digging I had done the first day, I found them the next as busily at work as ever at my garden, which they were rapidly defoliating. At this stage, our medical officer, Dr. J.H. Simpson,* came to my assistance, and suggested pouring carbolic acid, mixed with water, down their burrows. (* This gentleman, beloved by all who knew him, of rare talent, and with every prospect of a prosperous career before him, died at Jamaica from hydrophobia, between two and three months aft

t them down on the top of the slope, whence they rolled down to the bottom, where another relay of labourers picked them up and carried them to the new burrow. It was amusing to watch the ants hurrying out with bundles of food, dropping them over the slope, and rushing back immediately for more. They also brought out gre

acid. The water is required to carry the acid down to the lowest chambers. The ants, as before, were at once withdrawn from my garden; and two days afterwards, on visiting the place, I found all the survivors at work on one track that led directly to the old nest of the year before, where they were busily employed making fresh excavations. Many were bringing along pieces of the ant-food from the old to the new nests; others carried th

the commotion is carried to the formicarium, and huge fellows, measuring three-quarters of an inch in length, that only come out of the nest during a migration or an attack on the nest or one of the working columns, are seen stalking down with a determined air, as if they would soon right matters. As soon, however, as they have touched the sublimate, all their stateliness leaves them: they rush about; their legs are seized hold of by some of the smaller ants already affected by the poison; and they themselves begin to bite, and in a short time become the centres of fresh balls of rabid ants. The sublimate can only be used effectively in dry weather. At Colon I found the Americans using coal tar, which they spread across their p

ST OF LEAF-C

in the cut leaves, I could never find any quantity of these in the burrows, and it was evident that they were used up in some way immediately they were brought in. The chambers were always about three parts filled with a speckled, brown, flocculent, spongy-looking mass of a light and loosely connected substance. Throughout these masses were numerous ants belonging to the smallest division of the workers, which do not engage in leaf-carrying. Along with them were pupae and larvae, not gathered together, but dispersed, apparently irregularly, throughout the flocculent mass. This mass, which I have called the ant-food, proved, on examination, to be composed of minutely subdivided pieces of leaves, withered to a brown colour, and overgrown and lightly connected together by a minute white fungus that ramified in every direction throughout it. I not only found this fungus in every chamber I opened, but also in the chambers of the nest of a distinct species that generally comes out only in the night-time, often entering houses and carrying off various farinaceous substances, and which does not make mounds above its nests, but long, winding passages, terminating in chambers similar to the common s

down into the ground, and are left there. On the contrary, in dry and hot weather, when the leaves would get dried up before they could be conveyed to the nest, the ants, when in exposed situations, do not go out at all during the hot hours, but bring in their leafy burdens in the cool of the day and during the night. As soon as the pieces of leaves are carried in they must be cut up by the small class of workers into little pieces. I have never seen the smallest class of ants carrying in leaves; their duties appear to be inside, cutting them up into smaller fragments, and nursing the immature ants. I have, however, seen them running out along the paths with the others; but instead of helping to carry in the burdens, they climb on the top of the pieces which are being carried along by the middle-sized workers, and so get a ride home again. It is very probable that they take a run out merely for air and exercise. The largest class of what are called workers are, I believe, the directors and protectors of the others. They are never seen out of the nest, excepting on particular occasions, such as the

Every time they came along a number of ants were crushed to death. They persevered in crossing for several days, but at last set to work and tunnelled underneath each rail. One day, when the waggons were not running, I stopped up the tunnels with stones; but althoug

parasitic fly hovering over a column of ants, near a nest, and every now and then darting down and attaching an egg to one entering. Large, horned beetles (