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Through sun and cloud, day and night, hour after hour there was found no Eciton with individual initiative enough to turn aside an ant's breadth from the circle which he had traversed perhaps fifteen times: the masters of the jungle had become their own mental prey.
Thus, in Eciton, there are working and soldier neuters, with jaws and instincts extraordinarily different: in Cryptocerus, the workers of one caste alone carry a wonderful sort of shield on their heads, the use of which is quite unknown: in the Mexican Myrmecocystus, the workers of one caste never leave the nest; they are fed by the workers of another caste, and they have an enormously developed abdomen which secretes a sort of honey, supplying the place of that excreted by the aphides, or the domestic cattle as they may be called, which our European ants guard and imprison.
Probably this cowardly and un-antly deposition has caused it to become the prey of the Eciton. At any rate, I never saw the Ecitons attack the nest of other species.
They also came upon a bank, in their course, in which was a nest belonging to a large species of white ant. They forced their way in, attacked them, and dragged out the bodies of the slain. These were cut into three or four pieces, each of which was lifted up by an eciton and carried off.
Amongst the ants of Central America I place the Eciton as the first in intelligence, and as such at the head of the Articulata. Wasps and bees come next to ants, and then others of the Hymenoptera. Between ants and the lower forms of insects there is a greater difference in reasoning powers than there is between man and the lowest mammalian.
The wasps could guard against optical discovery, but the blind Ecitons had senses which transcended vision, if not even scent. Late that night, our lanterns showed the remnants of the Eciton army wandering aimlessly about, making near approach impossible, but apparently lacking any definite concerted action.
Fewer and fewer now came along the well worn path; burdens littered the line of march, like the arms and accoutrements thrown down by a retreating army. At last a scanty single line struggled past tired, hopeless, bewildered, idiotic and thoughtless to the last. Then some half dead Eciton straggled from the circle along the beach, and threw the line behind him into confusion.
I did not try to reach the nest, which I supposed to lie at the bottom of the broad mine, and therefore, in the middle of the base of the stony hillock. Eciton drepanophora.
The peculiar feature in the habits of the Eciton genus is their hunting for prey in regular bodies, or armies. It is this which chiefly distinguishes them from the genus of common red stinging-ants, several species of which inhabit England, whose habit is to search for food in the usual irregular manner.
As soon as an Eciton gets hold of its prey, it rushes off back along the advancing column, which is composed of two sets, one hurrying forward, the other returning laden with their booty, but all and always in the greatest haste and apparent hurry.
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