53 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



quick-witted ones, become synonymous with all that is crafty and 



cunning. 



We commenced this article mainly to call attention to some facts 

 concerning a certain kind of ant, which must have attracted the notice 

 of others before. It is difficult, at first, to see what special advantages 

 can offer to the little yellow ants that persistently, year after year, 

 construct their burrows under our brick pavements, and use these 

 thoroughfares for their promenades and hunting-grounds. One would 

 consider that such regions would be almost the last places these intel- 

 ligent little insects would select. Manv of them must be crushed 

 daily beneath our feet, and their little hillocks and annular tumuli 

 trod upon or swept away. Side-walks which are much traveled on 

 are often selected by these industrious and courageous little fellows, 

 and here they burrow beneath the bricks, and heap up their moles 

 undaunted by the frequent demolition of their work, and the death 

 of many of their comrades. It is obvious that the advantages must 

 outweigh the disadvantages, otherwise the ants could not long sur- 

 vive, and continue their work, as they do from year to year. 



We know well enough the unfavorable conditions to which they 

 are subjected : the crushing steps of busy feet ; the wheels of boys' 

 velocipedes, and children's hoops ; the sweeping-broom, a very scourge 

 of destruction ; deluges from the garden-pipe, which to them must be 

 Noackian, and the occasional trailing of a long skirt, with the devas- 

 tating effect of a typhoon and sirocco rolled into one. All these must 

 invariably destroy many lives and demolish many an earth-work. 



Among the conditions that these ants require for their perpetua- 

 tion and increase are, first, soil in which they can easily burrow their 

 nests and galleries ; second, substances which may be heated by the 

 sun, and beneath which they may bring their pupae, or partially de- 

 veloped offspring, in order to hasten their more rapid development. 

 It is said that colonies of ants have constructed their nests in or near 

 fire-places that they might avail themselves of the artificially heated 

 bricks of the hearth for this purpose. In pastures ants often con- 

 struct their galleries beneath large stones, and bring their pupa? up 

 from the burrows below, placing them just beneath the stone which 

 lias been heated by the sun, and which retains the heat for a consid- 

 erable time after the sun sets. It is a common experience in turning 

 over stones in the pastures to find the galleries just beneath densely 

 crowded with pupae, and when the ants are surprised in this way they 

 show great solicitude in their efforts to remove the pupae to a place of 

 safety. It is astonishing to see how quickly many hundreds of pupae 

 are removed to the burrows below. In using the brick walks of cit- 

 ies, the ants find the most suitable conditions for their burrows, as it 

 is customary to bed the bricks in a layer of sifted gravel, and the 

 ants, in mining into this material, are not interrupted by the obsta- 

 cles they would naturally encounter in other deposits. The bricks 



