ants' nests. 501 



lie at liberty among- the auts, and are carried by them. The robbing 

 expeditious are undertalien in the daytime, and the booty is carried to 

 the migratory nest, where it serves chiefly as food for the larvne. 

 When one locality has been sufficiently pillaged the whole colony 

 migrates to another resting place. These latter migrations with bag 

 and baggage, that is to say, with the brood, take ])lace exclusively at 

 night. 



Far less is known about the nests of the blind species of Eciton and 

 the entirely blind migratory ant genera Dorylus and ^Enictus, whose 

 workers had previously, like the male oi Eciton {labidus), been classed 

 as separate genera (T</j?/tto^owe West w. and Typhlatta Smith), because 

 their connection with the previously described males was i)ot yet 

 known. I have myself seen Dorylus juvencnlus, at Gabes, Soutli Tunis, 

 hunting under ground. Tlie winged males of Dorylus jiivenculKs Fab. 

 [badms Geest.), Eciton hetschJcoi Mayr, and JEnictus wroughtonii 

 FoREL have been seen creeping out of the ground in company with 

 workers and flying away. The very nest of Dorylus helvolus was dug 

 up by Trimen, who found the female. Nothing more definite, however, 

 is known. Are the plundered nests of other ants used for the moment 

 as migratory nests? Are there here nocturnal migrations, too, and not 

 robbing expeditions only? The future must tell us. At all events, 

 judging by the observations made up to this time, including my own, 

 Dorylus and JEnictus appear to i^refer the neighborhood of human 

 habitations, and to fight under ground with other ants. 



10.— ROAD BUILDING. 



Certain European smts, Formica rvfa, F. pratensis, and Lasiusfuligi- 

 nosus, build genuine roads in our meadows. The finest and best finished 

 are those of Formica pratensis De Geer. A meadow, as has already 

 been said, is a primeval forest to the ants. If the ants are like Formica 

 pratensisj rather large, and if they are compelled, like that species, to 

 drag home all kinds of timbers as building materials, as well as animal 

 booty, a meadow, which otherwise furnishes them with the finest hunt- 

 ing grounds, presents terrible obstacles. Formica pratensis is awk- 

 ward; we need only notice what inexpressible difticulty it has in 

 making its way with a load through the thicket of blades of grass in a 

 meadow, how constantly the load is getting wedged between them, and 

 what incredible patience and perseverance the insect displays in the 

 effort to go forward to understand the object of the roads. The road 

 building of Formica pratensis presents one of the most wonderful dis 

 plays of animal instinct that I know of. Several such roads radiate with 

 great regularity from one of the larger nests of this species lying in 

 a meadow ; I have counted from three to eight and even twelve of them 

 (so large a number is rare and occurs only in the case of very large 

 nests). It can be seen that these roads lead mostly to trees or shrubs 

 on which the ants climb up in multitudes in order to milk the plant 



