160 ANTS AND CHILDREN OF THE GARDEN 



inches across the base, and the steep inner cone was nicely 

 paved with pebbles. I dug up the nest but found no ants. 



ALBERT. I've seen the Garden ants do that. They 

 generally keep many small grains of rock on the inner 

 slope. 



CECIL. Our ants closed their doors up tight today- 

 even used fine dirt. Two Acrobats that tried to break in 

 failed. Burglars, as we have witnesses many times. 



DOROTHY. Last evening I sprinkled your yard until 

 your soft earth pellets crumbled and until the earth was 

 wet a quarter of an inch deep. Your ants enjoyed the mist. 

 The water collected on them in little balls. 



ANT. When we have time we keep our bodies so well 

 oiled and burnished that mist, fog or dew will not wet us. 



DOROTHY. We have no big ant mounds, like those in 

 the foothills. 



KENNETH. Livingstone found ant hills twenty feet 

 high in Africa. 



CECIL. Yes, and some ants in this country remove dirt 

 equal to 464 Pyramids of Egypt, when you compare ants 

 with men in size. 



ALBERT. One writer says that a colony in the Garden 

 of the Gods removed 360 cubic feet of earth and went down 

 in the ground eight feet. This would equal 1,408 feet in 

 depth for man. 



KENNETH. A man found that ants tunnel under small 

 streams, too. A tunnel 650 feet long was found in Texas, 

 and the door was 450 feet from the nest. 



CECIL. They say some ants build towns several colo- 

 nies near each other. The population on a few acres may 

 equal that of China 400,000,000. In times of danger and 

 when accidents occur to a nest, the colonies help each other. 

 A single colony has been known to have 200 branches. An- 



