NESTING ARCHITECTURE 



the ants had successfully solved their problem of build- 

 ing a stable structure with friable materials, and had 

 wrought it into a true communal home. 



To further learn their method, let us fix attention 

 upon one point. A small cavity with a bit of projecting 

 clod on the foundation of the removed part, and close 

 to the remaining one, was the centre of active operations. 

 Just above towered the perpendicular face of the half- 

 cone, along which everywhere squads of workers were 



Fig. 30 AXT ENGINEERING 



Covering-in a broken horizontal gallery and repairing a broken 



vertical one 



continually thrusting their brown heads out of gallery 

 openings and dropping pellets of soil. They were clear- 

 ing up the inner debris from the broken passageways, 

 and doubtless some of them were calmly carrying 

 forward the improvements begun before the Dearth- 

 quake ' (Fig. 30) . These pellets were taken up by the 

 workers beneath, who for some reason best known to 



themselves seemed to prefer them to those that lay 



43 



