Note 29 — Chapter I

‘The larger ants have been known to strip bare to the bone the carcase of a cow in a single night. And Mr. Abson informed me, that he was once reduced to that state of debility by a severe attack of fever, as to be so wholly helpless, that the ants attacked him in the night, when lying in his bed; and that if, fortunately, one of his domestics had not awoke, they would have devoured him before morning, so incapable was he of calling for help or struggling with his assailants. At the time he related this anecdote to me, I was confined by indisposition in the very room where the circumstance occurred, and did not feel very comfortable at the prospect of being perhaps eaten alive.’—Capt. John Adams, p. 68. After this, I need hardly point out to the collector of natural history the easiest way of cleaning a skeleton in Africa.