CARPENTER-ANTS. 243 



" Our little insects, now in safety in their nest, retire 

 gradually to the interior before the last passages are 

 closed ; one or two only remain without, or concealed 

 behind the doors on guard, while the rest either take 

 their repose, or engage in diiferent occupations in the 

 most perfect security. I was impatient to know what 

 took place in the morning upon these ant-hills, and 

 therefore visited them at an early hour. I found them 

 in the same state in which I had left them the preceding 

 evening. A few ants were wandering about on the surface 

 of the nest, some others issued from time to time from 

 under the margin of their little roofs formed at the entrance 

 of the galleries : others afterwards came forth, who began 

 removing the wooden bars that blockaded the entrance, 

 in which they readily succeeded. This labour occupied 

 them several hours. The passages were at length free, 

 and the materials with which they had been closed scat- 

 tered here and there over the ant-hill. Every day, moining 

 and evening, during the fine weather, I was a witness to 

 similar proceedings. On days of rain the doors of all 

 the ant-hills remained closed. When the sky was cloud}^ 

 in the morning, or rain was indicated, the ants, who 

 seemed to be aware of it, opened but in part their several 

 avenues, and immediately closed them when the rain com- 

 menced." * 



The galleries and chambers which are roofed in as thus 

 described, are very similar to those of the mason-ants, 

 being partly excavated in the earth, and partly built with 

 the clay thence procured. It is in these they pass the 

 night, and also the colder months of the winter, when they 

 become torpid, or nearly so, and of course require not the 

 winter granaries of corn with which the ancients fabulously 

 furnished them. 



Carpenter-Ants. 

 The ants that work in wood perform much more exten- 

 sive operations than any of the other carpenter insects 

 which we have mentioned. Their only tools, like those 



* Huber on Ants, p. 11. 



