fielde] ant-nests 39 



form it may 1)e made by cutting a piece of toweling the size of the 

 base of the nest and then cut holes the size of the inside of the 

 rooms of the nest (see accompanying half-tone). 



An outer roofing of blotting-paper makes the interior of the nest 

 wholly dark. The food-room should be light, as it represents the 

 ant's outside world. 



When any room in the nest requires cleaning, it is covered with 

 transparent glass, and then the ants withdraw from it with their 

 young into a dark room, which may in its turn be made light. 



The food-room is dry, and in cool weather requires attention 

 but once a fortnight. Sponge-cake merged in a little honey or 

 molasses, banana, apple, mashed walnut, and the muscular parts 

 and larvae of insects are among the favorite edibles. Food should 

 be constantly attainable in the nest, but it should be introduced 

 in tiny morsels that it may not by decomposing vitiate the air. 



Since moisture encourages the growth of molds, no water is put 

 into the food-room. But ants drink often, and they require a 

 humid atmosphere. All other rooms than that alloted to their 

 food are made humid by laying a flake of sponge on the floor and 

 keeping the sponge saturated with clean water dropped twice a 

 week from a pipette. The sponges are kept clean by weekly 

 washing and immersion in hot water. Sponges of fine tough 

 texture render best service, as they ofifer no apertures where ants 

 may conceal their eggs. The flake of sponge should be so thin as 

 to permit the ants to pass between it and the glass roof-pane. 



The completed nest is less than half an inch in its interior 

 height, and does not exceed three-fourths of an inch in its exterior 

 height. A low-power lens is easily focused upon the ants within 

 the nest. 



In order to stock a nest with an ant colony, wild nests are dug 

 up and the ants captured are carried, along with some soil, in jars 

 whose mouths are covered with gauze cloth. The ants and soil 

 are then scattered over an " island " made by floating a board on 

 water, or better, by grooving a channel around the edge of a thick 

 board and filling this moat with water which temporarily confines 

 the ants. A piece of glass covered by opaque paper is suspended 

 slightly above the surface of the board. The ants soon gather 

 their young underneath the darkened glass, and some of them 

 may be easily scooped, without any soil, into the nest. Or a nest 



