PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS^ 95 



habitation has received during their state of inactivity : 

 this observation more particularly applies to the hill- 

 ant, (F. riffa), 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 lestore 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 

 repairing 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 car- 

 ried, 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 

 w as at the full '^ ; and their historian Gould observes, 

 " that they even exceed the painful industrious bees. 

 For the ants employ each moment, by day and night, 

 almost without intermission, unless hindered by exces- 

 sive rains'*." M. Huber also, speaking of a mason- 

 ant, not found with us, tells us that they work after 

 sun-set, and in the night''. To these I can add some 

 observations of my own, which fully confirm these ac- 

 counts. My first were made at nine o'clock at night, 

 when I found the inlmbitants of a nest of the red ant 

 {Myrmica rubra) very busily employed ; I repeated 

 the observation, which I could conveniently do, the nest 

 being in my garden, at various times from that hour till 

 twelve, and always found some going and coming, even 

 while a heavy rain was falling. Having in the day 



• Hht. JnlmuL 1. ix. c. 38. " Goiikl, 68. ' Iluber, 35, 42. 



