HA Pi VESTING A NTS. 33 



I soon saw that the ants entered and came out from 

 three or four small passages in the cleft surface of the 

 rock, and that their nest actually lay in the sandstone 

 itself. Havino^ contrived to wedg-e off several larsre 

 flakes of the rock, which was soft in most places and 

 might be scooped out with a strong knife, I discovered 

 that though some of the passages of the ants followed 

 the lines of cleavage and the cracks made by the fine wiry 

 fibres of the bushes growing on the surface, others were 

 frequently made in the form of tubular tunnels through 

 the living rock. Without the aid of hammer and chisel 

 it was not possible to follow the galleries and to 

 secure specimens of the mined rock ; but on the next 

 day (Dec. 7th) I returned armed with tools, and with 

 the assistance of a friend * quarried out a portion of 

 the nest, tracing it down eventually to twenty-three 

 inches below the surface of the rock in a vertical, and 

 to about sixteen inches away from the surface in a 

 horizontal direction. 



At one point where the rock was almost entirely 

 solid and without flaw or crevice, and where it was 

 clear that the passages were entirely the work of the 

 ants, we measured a tunnel by worming a straw down it, 

 and found it to be ten inches in length. We subse- 

 quently traced this tunnel or rock gallery down until 

 it communicated with a chamber filled with winged ants 

 and seeds of several kinds. This granary was hori- 

 zontal, and merely an enlargement of an ordinary gal- 

 lery of a compressed spindle-shape, flattened from 

 above downwards, measuring as nearly as I could 

 estimate three inches in length, by a trifle less than 



* I take this opportunity of expressing my tliauks to Mr. Holier t 

 I.ightbody for help on this and other occasions 



D 



