ANT COMMUNITIES 



assembled? An exact census in such a case is im- 

 practicable, but at least a reasonable approximate is 

 possible. Dr. August Ford, the eminent Swiss myr- 

 mecologist, has described a community of two hundred 

 mounds of a closely related species (Formica exsecta) 

 among the mountains of Switzerland, as having each a 

 population ranging from five thousand to five hundred 

 thousand. If one were to apply the lowest estimate 

 (five thousand) to our American community, it would 

 give a total population of eight and a half million living 

 creatures! That is quite enough to justify their claim 

 to the title of "city," but, in truth, a conservative esti- 

 mate would make them many times as numerous. 



In his Die N ester der Ameisen (Ants' Nests) [F. -1 and 

 5], in commenting on my observations upon this sodality 

 of the Alleghany Mountain ants, Doctor Forel says: 

 "These ant kingdoms have, in all probability, a popula- 

 tion of two hundred to four hundred million inhabitants, 

 all forming a single community, and living together in 

 active and friendly intercourse." Think of it! A 

 population equal to that of the whole empire of China! 

 And this is -not a wild guess of an enthusiastic vision- 

 ary, but the sober calculation of the veteran chief of Eu- 

 rope's myrmecologists, and one of its foremost medical 

 specialists. I have spoken of this mighty concourse of 

 organized insects as a city; but doubtless kingdom, or 

 empire, might be a better title, for there was through- 

 out the settlement a marked tendency to groups of 

 mounds of different sizes, which might represent the 

 cities or large centres of population distributed through- 

 out a commonwealth. 



No North American ant exceeds these mound-builders 

 in the size of the structures reared by them. But in 



8 



