''SERMONS IN''— ANTS. 



347 



FIG. 114. — OCCIDENT-AXT GATHEKING SUNFLOWER SEED. 



therefore, that these ancient writers made no mistake, 

 and that the naturalists who voted them in error were 

 wrong themselves. 



" We have other harvesting-ants in our own land. 

 Two of the most common objects that attract the eye 

 of a traveler upon the Great American Plains are the 

 villages of tlae Prairie-dogs and the cone-shaped mounds 

 of the Occident-ant. Here is one of these (Fig. 111.) 

 They are covered with gravel, which the ants bring up 

 from beneath, having dug them out in making their 

 granaries and boring out pipe-like roads or galleries 

 that unite them. The granaries are ranged in stories 

 one above another, and I traced them as far as eight 

 feet beneath the surface. This figure (Fig. 112) shows 

 an interior plan of one of these nests, as it was seen 



