482 ants' nests. 



fessor Stoll, found tLe nests of Vamponotus atriceps Sm,, race stereo- 

 rariiis Forel, constautly under tbe dried excrement of cattle, and 

 even inside of it, in Guatemala. 



Pere Cambone, in Antananarivo, Madagascar, sent me a stalk of 

 Sokmum anriculatum, the soft marrow of wliicli, excavated and divided 

 nto compartments, served as a nest for Technomi/rmex albipc.s Smith 

 In this case the gnawing capacity of the ants had made the natural 

 object serviceable. A portion of this nest is represented in fig. 2, 

 two-thirds of natural size. 



Dr. Goldi, in Eio de Janeiro, sent me several specimens of Camponoius 

 cingidatus Mayr,, a very handsome, rather large ant, as the regular 

 inhabitant of the hollows (internodes) of the bamboos there. Pere 

 Camboue, in Antananarivo, sent me Preiiolepis ellisii Forel from the 

 hollow stalks of one of the Malvace.ie, in -which it lives. Major Yer- 

 bury, of Ceylon, sent me, by Mr. Wroughton, Gamponotus reiieidaius 

 Roger, with its nest, which was also in a hollow stalk. Mr. Wrough- 

 ton, divisional forest officer at Poonah, India, sent me the nests of a very 

 small ant, CariHoc<rn(lyla wronghton'ii Forel, which he had fouml in 

 the si)ace between the two surfaces of the leaves of a tree [Eiujenia 

 jambohnKi), the ])arenchym of which (the green of the leaf between the 

 exterior membranes) had evidently been devoured by a very small cater- 

 pillar. This nest of Cardioconilyla n'roKghtoniiM represented in tig. 3 

 by Mr. ];. Schroter. 



The well known ant nests in the hollow acacia thorns of tropical 

 lauds also belong to this class; but more on this subject hereafter. 



2.— EARTH NESTS. 



Earth is the most usual material for the nest building of auts. It is 

 well known (Gould, Huber, etc.) that the ordinary earth structures 

 (mounds) of many of our ants are created by the workeis mining under 

 ground after rainy weather, bringing the wet jjarticles of earth to the 

 surface of the ground and pressing them into walls and vaults by means 

 of their mandibles and forelegs, using at the same time blades of grass 

 etc., as pillars and inside walls. In this way are made the Avell-known 

 labyrinths, which I myself have Avatched innumerable times. It is, 

 however, an unsolved ]>roblem whether really, as Huber thought, water 

 alone always suffices as cement for the earth or whether it is not in 

 some cases mixed with a secretion of the glands of the ants. The great 

 firmness of certain structures, for instance those of Lasiiis Jiavns, t^ivcs 

 some probability to the latter sui)positiou, particularly when we 

 consider the fragile character of the structures of other kinds of ants. 



Earth nests may be divided into three classes: 



(a) Nests ichich are entirely excavated. — In this case passages and 

 chambers are simply excavated in the ground, without the particles of 

 earth which are dug out being worked up into an artificial upper struc. 

 ture; they are merely thrown away. There are many kinds of auts 



