90 ON THE HABITS OF ANTS. [LECT. 



and fifty feet high ; that is to say, higher than the Duke 

 of York's column. 



As additional evidence I may adduce the fact, that 

 when my L. nigers were carrying off food placed in 

 a cup on a piece of board, if I turned the board 

 round, so that the side which had been turned towards 

 the nest was away from it, and vice versd, the ants 

 always returned over the same track on the board, 

 and consequently directly away from home. If I 

 moved the board to the other side of my artificial 

 nest, the result was the same. Evidently they followed 

 the track, not the direction. 



It is remarkable, that notwithstanding the labours 

 of so many excellent observers, and though ants swarm 

 in every field and every w r ood, we do not yet know 

 how their nests commence. 



Three principal modes have been suggested : after 

 the marriage flight the young queen may either 



1. Join her own or some other old nest ; 



2. Associate herself with a certain number of workers, 



and with their assistance commence a new nest ; or 



3. Found a new nest by herself. 



The question can, of course, only be settled by obser- 

 vation, and the experiments made to determine it have 

 hitherto been indecisive. Blanchard indeed, in his 

 work on the " Metamorphoses of Insects " (I quote from 

 Dr. Duncan's translation, p. 205) says, "Huber observed 

 a solitary female go down into a small underground 

 hole, take off her own wings, and become, as it were, 

 a worker ; then she constructed a small nest, laid a 

 few eggs, and brought up the larvae by acting as 

 mother and nurse at the same time." 



