120 ROMANCE OF THE INSECT WORLD CHAP. 



on the surface. Their makers may be called masons. 

 Ants are likewise carpenters by trade, hewing their 

 homes out of solid tree trunks and roots often with an 

 excessively involved and delicate art. A third kind of 

 nest is pensile, and composed of leaves, or of collections 

 of vegetable or animal matters. These three general 

 types include many most interesting modifications, 

 each species of workmen being endowed with the 

 operative talent that suits them best. 



The common Wood Ant, otherwise named the Hill, 

 or the Horse, or the Red (Formica mfa*\ is a good 

 representative of the group (Formicites*) to which 

 appertain the true ants. Few people in this country, and 

 throughout all central Europe, are unacquainted with 

 the dwellings (see Fig. 15). They consist exteriorly 

 of elevated hillocks or mounds, many of them of large 

 dimensions, made up of bits of straw, wood, little 

 stones, morsels of earth, leaves, grain, in a word, of 

 anything portable and within reach. Usually they are 

 situated in woods or their neighbourhood where the 

 undergrowth is not too dense, often under some shelter 

 such as a bush or tree. They are especially plentiful 

 in fir-woods, where the fallen needle-like leaves of the 

 firs afford abundance of building material ready to 

 hand. At the first glance the dome seems nothing 

 but a rude confused mass ; in reality its internal con- 

 struction presents an arrangement that is excellently 

 adapted to promote the welfare and comfort of the 

 inhabitants, ensuring them free liberty of action 

 throughout, and protection at once from extremes of 

 heat and cold by the maintenance of a genial warmth. 

 It is composed of numberless small chambers, united 



