48 | ARCHITECTURE OF ANTS. 
a little lighter in colour. The abdomen 
is of an obscure brown, the scale narrow, 
of a square form, and slightly scolloped. 
The body is one line and two-fifths in 
length. * 
This ant, one of the most industrious 
of its tribe, forms its nest of stories, four 
or five lines in height. ‘The partitions 
are not more than half a line in thick- 
ness, and the substance of which they 
are composed is so finely grained, that 
the inner walls present one smooth, un- 
broken surface. These stories are not 
horizontal: they follow the slope of the 
ant-hill, and lie one upon the other to 
the ground-floor, which communicates 
with the subterranean lodges. They are 
not always, however, arranged with the 
same regularity, for these ants do not fol- 
low an invariable plan; it appears, on 
the contrary, that nature has allowed 
them a certain latitude in this respect, 
_and that they can, according to circum- 
stances, modify them to. their wish :— 
* See the notes in the Appendix. 
