176 JOURNAL OF THE TRINIDAD 



proprietors who spend large sums of money to get rid of it. The 

 nests of these ants vary in size, a single colony occupying not more 

 than about a cubic font of s r a:-e and externalby is not very conspi- 

 cuous in the long grass of the cocoa estates, but in the woods I have 

 seen nests covering an area of about 2,500 square feet and the 

 earth and used parts of plants, brought up from the interior, formed 

 regular little hillocks fully 4 to 5 feet high. These large nests 

 consist of hundreds of colonies each of about 1 cubic foot, all 

 are connected with each other by subterranean passages, but as a 

 rule each colony has an exit hole to itself which seems to be 

 exclusively used for carrying out the refuse of the garden and 

 other waste products. The nests are made in soft clayey soil, 

 and the reason why these large nests are divided into several 

 smaller ones is perhaps because the ants are taught by nature 

 the danger of constructing a large nest which ma} 7 cave in or be 

 destroyed by man or animals and the colony exterminated 

 entirely The fact of there being several cavities, each with its 

 garden, increase the chances of one or two nests escaping the 

 general disaster and thus the ants have a greater facility for 

 perpetuating their species. But whatever the reason be the 

 ants prefer to make another cavity a little way ofl* instead of 

 enlarging the original nest to a size corresponding with the 

 increase of the fungus gardens and number of the inhabitants. 

 Tn an artificial nest of this species when all the available space had 

 been filled I noticed that the workers carried fungus, eggs, 

 and larvse to a dark corner of the room and proceeded to found 

 another nest. "The mushroom gardens consist of a gray spongy 

 " mass full of chambers like a coarse sponge, containing the 

 " larv£e, pup?e and workers. This mass never touches the sides of 

 " the cavity, and there is always a clear space of about a 

 " finger's width between the garden and the wall of the cavity. 

 " The older part is differently coloured, but not very sharply 

 " marked oft" from more recent growth. The older part is 

 " yellowish red in colour ; newly built portions, forming the 

 " surface of the garden are of a blue black colour. The round 

 " particles are penetrated by and enveloped in white fungus 

 " hyphae which hold the particles together. Strewn thickly 

 " upon the surface of the garden are seen round white bodies 

 " about 0° 25 m.m. in diameter ; they always occur in the nests 

 " except in the very young portion of the gardens. They consist 

 "of aggregatons of peculiar swollen hypha? and are termed by 

 " Moller the " Kohlrabbi " clump." These form the principal 

 food of the Ants. On the authority of Kew the fungus culti- 

 vated by these ants is the same as that found by Moller in Braz'.l 

 viz : liozites gungylophora Moller. What plants are used by the 

 ants would be haid to tell as they use so many, but they seem 

 to have a special liking for introduced ones, and aie particularly 



