ANT COMMUNITIES 



But one who has mingled much with working-men and 

 closely observed their manners might venture to sug- 

 gest that a much closer approach to these exemplary 

 characters is entirely practicable. That it would greatly 

 enhance comfort, health, good looks, and that sense of 

 respectability and personal purity that goes so far to 

 elevate human nature is hardly to be doubted. But 

 could employers afford to give their workmen the time 

 needful to effect such personal cleanliness? Would the 

 increased efficiency coming with the higher quality of 

 manhood and womanhood thus attained sufficiently 

 increase the product and the value of the work to justify 

 the sacrifice? One asks such questions glibly enough, 

 but how shall he find a practical answer? 



An important item in public sanitation is ventilation. 

 Since ants are apterous, no such mode of agitating the 

 air and producing a current by rapid wing movements 

 is possible as practised by bees and hornets. The former 

 have squads of winged ventilators just within the hive 

 gate, the latter just outside the door. How ants pro- 

 duce a like effect is not yet determined. As most of 

 them domicile in the ground, they are not as likely to 

 suffer from heat as honey-bees and hornets. But al- 

 though their consumption of air is not great, one would 

 suppose that such crowds of creatures living in such 

 confined quarters as we have described would soon viti- 

 ate the atmosphere and make necessary some sort of 

 purification. 



Perhaps this is secured among the mound-making 

 ants by placing the city gates most numerously at the 

 base of the cone. Through these there is doubtless a 

 constant or sufficient current of air passing out of the 

 open doors distributed along the sides and upper parts 



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