258 THE HETEROGYNA. 



Notwithstanding the wholesale destruction to which 

 they are subject during their brief period of freedom, 

 a great number of the females survive, and these 

 may be seen crawling about upon the ground in every 

 direction, often even upon the pavements in the 

 streets of London. And now a curious circumstance 

 takes place, which perhaps is without a parallel in 

 any other department of Natural History. The fe- 

 male Ant, foreseeing that in the new character which 

 she is about to assume, the wings which have sup- 

 ported her in her aerial dance would only be an in- 

 cumbrance, deliberately divests herself of these useless 

 appendages by bending them forwards and pulling at 

 them with her mandibles. Specimens may often be 

 seen crawling along with the wings of one side quite 

 gone, whilst the others still adhere to the thorax. 

 The impregnated females appear sometimes to lay 

 the foundation of a new colony for themselves, but in 

 other cases they are secured by the workers of nests . 

 already formed, who tend upon them from the first, 

 and thus save them all trouble but that of laying 

 their eggs. 



The nests, to which I have already made frequent 

 reference, are formed in a variety of situations and 

 of very various materials. Most of them consist of 

 burrows hollowed out in the ground and covered by 

 a heap of earth thrown out from the numerous cham- 

 bers and passages. An example of this may be seen 

 in the common Garden Ant {Formica nigra) , which 

 frequently selects an inverted flower-pot as an arti- I 

 ficial shelter to its nest. The Wood Ant [F, rufa), 

 the largest of our British species, which is of a black 

 colour, with the thorax and legs and the base of the 

 antennse reddish, forms a large conical heap of dry 



