246 IXSECT ARCHITECTURE. 



are still found. If the work be less regular, it becomes 

 more delicate : for the ants, profiting by the hardness 

 and solidity of the materials, give to their building an 

 extreme degree of lightness. I have seen fragments of 

 from eight to ten inches in length, and of equal height, 

 formed of wood as thin as paper, containing a number of 

 apartments, and presenting a most singular appearance. 

 At the entrance of these apai-tments, worked out with so 

 much care, are very considerable openings ; but in place 

 of chambers and extensive galleries, the layers of the 

 wood are hewn in arcades, allowing the ants a free 

 passage in every direction. These may be regarded 

 as the gates or vestibules conducting to the several 

 lodges."* 



It is a singular circumstance in the structures of these 

 ants, that all the wood which they carve is tinged of a 

 black colour, as if it were smoked ; and M. Huber Avas 

 not a little solicitous to discover whence this arose. It 

 certainly does not add to the beauty of their streets, 

 which look as sombre as the most smoke-dyed walls in 

 the older lanes of the metropolis. M. Huber could not 

 satisfy himself whether it was caused by the exposure of 

 the wood to the atmosphere, by some emanation from 

 the ants, or by the thin layers of wood being acted upon 

 or decomposed by the formic acid.f But if any or all 

 of these causes operated in blackening the wood, we 

 should be ready to anticipate a similar effect in the case 

 of other species of ants which inhabit trees ; yet the 

 black tint is only found in the excavations of the jet-ant. 



We are acquainted with several colonies of the jet- 

 ants, — one of which, in the roots and trunk of an oak on 

 the road from Lewisham to Sydenham, near Brockley, 

 in Kent, is so extremely populous, that the numbers of 

 its inhabitants appeared to us beyond any reasonable 

 estimate. None of the other colonies of this species 

 which we have seen appear to contain many hundreds. 

 On cutting into the root of the before-mentioned tree, 

 we found the vertical excavations of much larger dimen- 

 * Huber, p. 56. f The acid of ants. 



