80 



THE NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA, 



[Ch. V. 



rounded chambers, about as large as a man's head, 

 connected together by tunnelled passages leading from 

 one chamber to another. Notwithstanding that many 



NEST OF LEAF-CUTTING ANT. 



columns of the ants were continually carrying in the cut 

 leaves, I could never find any quantity of these in the 

 burrows, and it was evident that they were used up in 

 some way immediately they were brought in. The 

 chambers were always about three parts filled with a 

 speckled brown, flocculent, spongy-looking mass of a light 

 and loosely connected substance. Throughout these 

 masses were numerous ants belonging to the smallest 

 division of the workers, and which do not engage in leaf- 

 carrying. Along with them were pupae and larva?, not 

 gathered together, but dispersed, apparently irregularly, 

 throughout the flocculent mass. This mass, which I 

 have called the ant-food, proved, on examination, to be 

 composed of minutely subdivided pieces of leaves, 

 withered to a brown colour, and overgrown and lightly 

 connected together by a minute white fungus that rami- 

 fied in every direction throughout it. I not only found 

 this fungus in every chamber I opened, but also in the 



