300 Insect Architecture. 



brought in a number of dried leaves, and other materials of 

 an enlarged form, with which they covered the roof : an exact 

 miniature of the art of our builders, when they form the 

 covering of any building. Nature, indeed, seems everywhere 

 to have anticipated the inventions of which we boast, and 

 this is doubtless one of the most simple. 



" Our little insects, now in safety in their nest, retire 

 gradually to the interior before the last passages are closed ; 

 one or two only remain without, or concealed behind the 

 doors on guard, while the rest either take their repose, or 

 engage in different occupations in the most perfect security. 

 I was impatient to know what took place in the morning 

 upon these ant-hills, and therefore visited them at an early 

 hour. I found them in the same state in which I had left 

 them the preceding evening. A few ants were wandering 

 about on the surface of the nest, some others issued from 

 time to time from under the margin of their little roofs 

 formed at the entrance of the galleries ; others afterwards 

 came forth, who began removing the wooden bars that block- 

 aded the entrance, in which they readily succeeded. This 

 labour occupied them several hours. The passages were at 

 length free, and -the materials with which they had been 

 closed scattered here and there over the ant-hill. Every day, 

 morning and evening, during the fine weather, I was a witness 

 to similar proceedings. On days of rain the doors of all the 

 ant-hills remained closed. When the sky was cloudy in 

 the morning, or rain was indicated, the ants, who seemed 

 to be aware of it, opened but in part their several avenues, 

 and immediately closed them when the rain commenced."* 



The galleries and chambers which are roofed in as thus 

 described are very similar to those of the mason-ants, 

 being partly excavated in the earth, and partly built with 

 the clay thence procured. It is in these they pass the 

 night, and also the colder months of the winter, when they 

 become torpid, or nearly so, and of course require not the 

 winter granaries of corn with which the ancients fabulously 

 furnished them. 



* Huber on Ants, p. 1 1 . 



