MASON- ANTS. 25*^ 



with perfect familiarity the same compartm.ents as 

 the ants, crawHng about with great activity with 

 them, and perfectly domesticated with each other. 

 They were small and white; but the constant vibra- 

 tion of their antennce, and the alacrity of their 

 motions, manifested a healthy vigour. The ants were 

 in a torpid state; but on being removed into a tem- 

 perate room, they assumed much of their summer's 

 animation. How these creatures are supported 

 during the winter season it is difiicult to compre- 

 hend; as in no one instance could we perceive any 

 store or provision made for the supply of theit 

 wants. The minute size of the larvtB manifested 

 that they had been recently deposited; and conse- 

 quently that their parents had not remained during 

 winter in a dormant state, and thus free from the 

 calls of hunger. The preceding month of February, 

 and part of January, had been remarkably severe; 

 the frost had penetrated deep into the earth, and long 

 held it frozen; the ants were in many cases not more 

 than four inches beneath the surface, and must have 

 been enclosed in a mass of frozen soil for a long 

 period; yet they, their young, and the onisci, were 

 perfectly uninjured by it: aifording another proof 

 of the fallacy of the commonly received opinion, that 

 cold is universallij destructive to insect life."* 



The earth employed by mason-ants is usually 

 moist clay, either dug from the interior parts of their 

 city, or moistened by rain. The mining-ants and the 

 ash-coloured {Formica fiisca) employ earth which is 

 probably not selected with so much care, for it forms 

 a much coarser mortar than what we see used in the 

 structures of the yellow ants {F. flava) and the 

 brown ants (F. hrunnea). We have never observed 

 them bringing their building materials of this kind 

 from a distance, like the mason-bees and like the 



*' Journal of a Naturalist, page 304. 



