204 ANTS AND CHILDREN OF THE GARDEN 



they won't give up. Their masons built a fine wall by the 

 doorway. The ants remove a stone when they want to go 

 out or in. 



FLORENCE. I find the Carpenters do their mining 

 after dark, so the birds and I won't see them. One of the 

 colonies is building in dry ground and is carrying the dry 

 dirt out in basketfuls (jawfuls) instead of making mud 

 balls of it. 



CECIL. Those that live in wood have some members 

 with very large heads that make handy doors. Some kinds 

 keep large herds of other insects in their nests. 



KENNETH. And many have new queens only every two 

 or three years. A completed colony is likely to have about 

 2,000 ants. These around here must not be complete yet, 



ALBERT. The Carpenters are the largest ant, but I see 

 that some are several times as large as others, even in the 

 same colony. 



CECIL. The books say it would take a hundred of. the 

 smallest kind of ants to equal one big Carpenter in size, 

 but I think it would take five hundred. The largest Car- 

 penter is over a half inch long, and the dwarf ants we 

 found are less than one-sixteenth of an inch in length. I 

 figure that the Carpenter is five hundred times as large as 

 one of these. 



FLORENCE. Hardly. Think of one man weighing two 

 hundred pounds and another only two-fifths of a pound. 

 Some dwarf ! 



CECIL. Why, the queen of the Dwarf ants we found is 

 a thousand times as big as one of their workers. Some 

 female spiders are fifteen hundred times as large as the 

 males. 



DOROTHY. The Longlegs are mining, too. I gave them 

 an insect and they dragged it indoors. 



