MASON-ANTS. 



235 



construction of a lodge, or some little beams that may be 

 useful in forming its angles and sides, it examines the 

 several parts with attention : then distributes, with much ' 

 sagacity and address, parcels of earth in the spaces, and 

 along the stems, taking from every quarter materials 

 adapted to its object, sometimes not caring to destroy the 

 work that others had commenced ; so much are its motions 

 regulated by the idea it has conceived, and upon which it 

 acts, with little attention to all else around it. It goes and 

 returns, until the plan is sufficiently iinderstood by its 

 companions. 



" In another part of the same ant-hill," continues M. 

 Huber, " several fragments of straw seemed expressly 

 jjlaced to form the roof of a large house ; a workman took 

 advantage of this disposition. These fragments lying hori- 

 zontally, at half-an-inch distance from the ground, formed, 

 in crossing each other, an oblong parallelogram. The 

 industrious insect commenced by placing earth in the 

 several angles of this framework, and all along the little 

 beams of whicli it was composed. The same workman 

 afterwards placed several lows of the same materials 

 against each other, when the roof became very distinct. 

 On perceiving the possibility of profiting by another plant 

 to support a vertical wall, it began laying the foundations 

 of it ; other ants having by this time arrived, finished in 

 common what this had commenced." * 



* Huber on Ants, p. 48. 



