Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/302

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In a Banana Plantation. Each tree is cut down when its single hunch of fruit is harvested, but new sprouts grow up from the root. 500,000, bunches of bananas are shipped from Santa Malta each month for New York.

enormous recurved mandibles. Like the drivers, these ants carry all their impedimenta with them. Those we observed always traveled in narrow columns which flowed ahead like living streamlets, branching out and reuniting over and over again. Foragers always appear to be in great haste and go scuttling along carrying pupæ, larvæ, pieces of dismembered insects, spoil from the nests of other species of ants, etc. We saw some foragers form long covered lanes with their bodies by clinging to each other with their mandibles and legs. Through these covered roads other individuals of the swarm scooted along—these were robbers carrying booty from the nests of other ants.

A Bromeliad.