378 ants' nests. 



pare Forel, Collections of Swiss Zoology^ Vol. IV., No. 4, 1888.) 

 The agricultural ants of Texas (Pogonomyrmex barbatus, Smith, 

 F. molefaciens^ Buckley) make a large clearing around their nests, 

 according to Lincecum and Mc.Cook, and numerous roads, in 

 addition, by sawing off the blades of grass, like our Formica 

 pratensis. 



11. — Review — The Ant World— Landscape Types of the 

 Ants' Nests — Polycalic Colonies. 



Even among us in Switzerland, a close investigation of the 

 meadows, the dry declivities of the mountains, the clearings of the 

 woods and thickets suffices to show us speedily that almost every- 

 thing is invaded by the structures of ants. Where there are no 

 actual nests there are underground passages and galleries, open 

 roads, covered ways, or, at least, the inhabitants of neighbouring 

 nests, who are scouting around and contending with one another 

 for the possession of the plants containing plant lice and cochineal 

 kermes, of the trees, the flowers, and the insect plunder. I have 

 even seen young birds which had just slipped out of the nest 

 killed and devoured by For7?tica pratensis in spite of the frantic 

 rage of the parent birds. The ants certainly, no less than men, 

 fancy themselves the lords of creation, for, thanks to their social 

 organisation, their numbers, and their courage, they have few foes 

 to fear ; their most formidable enemies are always other ants, just 

 as men are for other men. In the tropical world the struggle for 

 existence is much fiercer than with us, and the ants, with their 

 immense number of species, play a much more important part. 

 Their nest structures there, too, are correspondingly far more 

 varied, and display far more singular and complicated adaptations 

 as the results of the fight for life. The future will develop many 

 still more astonishing discoveries. 



We will now only give a glance at the most ordinary ant 

 structures with respect to the nature of the ground. 



In the meadows we find, above all, the mound structures of 

 earth, but side by side with them the mixed mounds of For?nica 

 pratensis^ sangui?tea, and pressilabris, together with pure excavated 

 nests. On detritus and declivities, we find chiefly nests under 

 stones, and the same upon mountains generally. In the forest we 



