NESTING ARCHITECTURE 



half an inch, the usual diameter, to one and a half 

 inch, as though a store-room or living-room were being 

 formed. Close by, a vertical gallery, one side of which 

 had been torn away, was being repaired by the infilling 

 of the broken side, and this work was done precisely as 

 in the case of the horizontal arches. 



One was reminded, in all these actions, of the methods 

 of bricklayers at work upon an arched sewer or culvert, 

 or of masons putting up a rubble-stone wall. There 

 were some marked differences the profound silence of 

 the worker ants and the absence of overseers. The 

 ant is no "spendthrift of her tongue." She "talks to us 

 in silence." No one is prompted or driven to work; 

 no one needs to be, for here there are no shirks. No 

 regular hours of service are kept, and there are no fixed 

 intervals of rest. Labor goes on all the time; and, view- 

 ed in the mass, there is no cessation, at least at this 

 juncture, by day or night. Each individual determines 

 for herself the period of work and the time for rest, and 

 so strong is the sense of duty, or the instinct of fidelity, 

 in every ant, that such individual liberty and respon- 

 sibility are not abused, and the public works of the 

 commonwealth are not damaged or delayed. 



Building operations were not limited, as in the above 

 cases, to the original site of the cone. A fragment half 

 the size of one's head, which had been shovelled to one 

 side, was a centre of special activity. It had already 

 been made the nucleus of a new mound. Columns, 

 corridors, and halls, corresponding closely with those out- 

 lined upon the under side of the fragment and united 

 therewith, had been erected. In one of these halls was 

 a small collection of dead ants, a token of a custom 

 sometimes observed among these insects to show a sort 



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