146 ROMANCE OF THE INSECT WORLD CHAP. 



ranean galleries occur in the heaps ; but they are com- 

 posed principally of plant-refuse, such as the discarded 

 envelopes of seed and grain, the chaff of grasses and 

 the like, of which it is advantageous to get rid, 

 in order to obtain greater space for the storage of the 

 good food. The workers relegated to the duties of 

 sorting the supplies, and casting forth those portions 

 that they find to be useless, must labour with assiduous 

 energy, judging by the speedy rise of the middens in 

 the harvest season ; and where their position is 

 sheltered from wind and rain, they often acquire 

 considerable dimensions. On and about these ac- 

 cumulations, plants foreign to the immediate vicinity 

 sometimes flourish, having grown from seeds accident- 

 ally dropped by the ants on their way home from 

 the harvest grounds. The texture of the floors of 

 the storechambers usually differs markedly from the 

 surrounding soil. The horizontal rooms at times lie 

 at great distances apart, but where the soil is shallow 

 the galleries and granaries may be much crowded 

 together. 



Some ants live in trees, and cut and chisel the wood 

 in a wonderful manner. The best known is F.fuligin- 

 osa* the emmet or jet ant, a brilliant black insect 

 with pale reddish tarsi.* Its residences it constructs 

 in the interior of old oaks and willows, gnawing the 

 trunks into numberless stories always more or less 

 horizontal, with a distance of about five or six lines 

 between the ceilings and floors. The divisions are 

 scarcely thicker than paper, a delicacy that is also 

 attained in the vertical supports that apportion off the 

 separate chambers. Communication in each story is 



