PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 95 



later according to the season, that ants first make their 

 appearance, and they continue their labours till the 

 middle or latter end of October. They emerge usually 

 from their subterranean winter-quarters on some sunny 

 day ; when, assembling in crowds on the surface of the 

 formicary, they may be observed in continual motion, 

 walking incessantly over it and one another, without de- 

 parting from home ; as if their object, before they re- 

 sumed their employments, was to habituate themselves 

 to the action of the air and sun*. This preparation re- 

 quires a few days, and then the business of the year 

 commences. The earliest employment of ants is most 

 probably to repair the injuries which their habitation has 

 received during their state of inactivity : this observation 

 more particularly applies to the hill-ant {F. rufa\ all the 

 upper stories of whose dwellings are generally laid flat 

 by the winter rains and snow ; but every species, it may 

 well be supposed, has at this season some deranged 

 apartments to restore to order, or some demolished 

 ones to rebuild. 



After their annual labours are begun, few are igno- 

 rant how incessantly ants are engaged in building or re- 

 pairing their habitations, in collecting provisions, and in 

 the care of their young brood; but scarcely any are aware 

 of the extent to which their activity is carried, and that 

 their labours are going on even in the night. — Yet this is 

 a certain fact. — Long ago Aristotle affirmed that ants 

 worked in the night when the moon was at the full ^ ; 

 and their historian Gould observes, "that they even ex- 

 ceed the painful industrious bees. For the ants employ 



' Gould, 67. De Geer, ii. 1054. " Hist. Animal. 1. ix. c. 38. 



