carpenter-ants. 279 

 Carpenter- Ants. 



The ants that work in wood perform much more 

 extensive operations than any of the other carpenter 

 insects which we have mentioned. Th' ir only tools, 

 liiie those of bees and wasps, are their jaws or man- 

 dibles; but though these may not appear so curiously 

 constructed as the ovipositor file of the tree-hopper 

 {Cicad(B)j or the rasp and saw of the saw-flies {Tcn- 

 tJwedijies), they are no less efficient in the perform- 

 ance of what is required. Among the carpenter-ants 

 the emmet or jet-ant (^F. fuliginosa) holds the first 

 rank, and is easily known by being rather less in 

 size than the wood-ant, and by its fine shining black 

 colour. It is less common in Britain than some of 

 the prececing, though its colonies may occasionally 

 be met with in the trunks of decaying oak or willow 

 trees in hedges. 



"The labourers," says Huber, " of this species, 

 work always in the interior of trees, and are desirous 

 of being screened from observation; thus every hope 

 on our part is precluded of following them in their 

 several occupations. I tried every expedient I could 

 devise to surmount this difficulty; I endeavoured to 

 accustom these ants to live and work under my in- 

 spection, but all my efforts were unsuccessful; they 

 even abandoned the most considerable portion of 

 their nest to seek some new asylum, and spurned the 

 honey and sugar which I ofiered them for nourish- 

 ment. I was now, by necessity, limited to the in- 

 spection only of their edifices; but by decomposing 

 some of the fragments with care, I hoped to acquire 

 some knowledge of their organization. 



" On one side I found horizontal galleries, hidden 

 in great part by their walls, which follow the circular 

 direction of the layers of the wood; and on an- 

 other, parallel galleries, separated by extremely thii\ 



