e. The distinction is a delicate physiological one, not
much appreciated by the victims of either mode of attack. The perfect
females can also sting, but not, of course, the males, who are poor,
wretched, useless creatures, only good as husbands for the community,
and dying off as soon as they have performed their part in the
world--another beautiful provision, which saves the workers the trouble
of killing them off, as bees do with drones after the marriage flight of
the queen bee.

The blind driver-ants of West Africa are among the very few species
that render any service to man, and that, of course, only incidentally.
Unlike most other members of their class, the driver-ants have no
settled place of residence; they are vagabonds and wanderers upon the
face of the earth, formican tramps, blind beggars, who lead a gipsy
existence, and keep perpetually upon the move, smelling their way
cautiously from one camping-place to another. They march by night, or on
cloudy days, like wise tropical strategists, and never expose themselves
to the heat of the day in broad sunshine, as though they were no better
than the mere numbered British Tommy Atkins at Coomassie or in the
Soudan. They move in vast armies across country, driving everything
before them as they go; for they belong to the stinging division, and
are very voracious in their personal habits. Not only do they eat up the
insects in their line of march, but they fall even upon larger creatures
and upon big snakes, which they attack first in the eyes, the most
vulnerable portion. When they reach a negro village the inhabitants turn
out _en masse_, and run away, exactly as if the visitors were English
explorers or brave Marines, bent upon retaliating for the theft of a
knife by nobly burning down King Tom's town or King Jumbo's capital.
Then the negroes wait in the jungle till the little black army has
passed on, after clearing out the huts by the way of everything eatable.
When they return they find their calabashes and saucepans licked clean,
but they also find every rat, mouse, lizard, cockroach, gecko, and
beetle completely cleared out from the whole village. Most of them have
cut and run at the first approach of the drivers; of the remainder, a
few blanched and neatly-picked skeletons alone remain to tell the tale.

As I wish to be considered a veracious historian, I will not retail the
further strange stories that still find their way into books of natural
history