prefer brown sugar to white: they say its sweetening power
is greater; no doubt its nourishing quality is greater, and therefore as
an article of diet deserving of preference. In refining sugar as in
refining salt (coarse bay salt containing a little iodine), an error may
be committed in abstracting matter designed by nature for a useful
purpose."]

But the assaults of the ants are not confined to dead animals alone,
they attack equally such small insects as they can overcome, or find
disabled by accidents or wounds; and it is not unusual to see some
hundreds of them surrounding a maimed beetle, or a bruised cockroach,
and hurrying it along in spite of its struggles. I have, on more than
one occasion, seen a contest between, them and one of the viscous
ophidians, _Caecilia, glutinosa_[1], a reptile resembling an enormous
earthworm, common in the Kandyan hills, of an inch in diameter, and
nearly two feet in length. On these occasions it would seem as if the
whole community had been summoned and turned out for such a prodigious
effort; they surround their victim literally in tens of thousands,
inflicting wounds on all parts, and forcing it along towards their nest
in spite of resistance. In one instance to which I was a witness, the
conflict lasted for the latter part of a day, but towards evening the
Coecilia was completely exhausted, and in the morning it had totally
disappeared, having been carried away either whole or piecemeal by its
assailants.

[Footnote 1: See _ante_, p. 317.]

The species I here allude to is a very small ant, which the Singhalese
call by the generic name of _Koombiya_. There is a species still more
minute, and evidently distinct, which frequents the caraffes and toilet
vessels. A third, probably the _Formica nidificans_ of Jerdan, is black,
of the same size as that last mentioned, and, from its colour, called
the _Kalu koombiga_ by the natives. In the houses its propensities and
habits are the same as those of the others; but I have observed that it
frequents the trees more profusely, forming small paper cells for its
young, like miniature wasps' nests, in which it deposits its eggs,
suspending them from a twig.

The most formidable of all is the great red ant or Dimiya.[1] It is
particularly abundant in gardens, and on fruit trees; it constructs its
dwellings by glueing the leaves of such species as are suitable from
their shape and pliancy into hollow balls, and these it lines with a
kind