AN INDUSTRIOUS LABOURER 



After observing the manner in which these ant-hills were 

 constructed I felt that the only way of thoroughly under- 

 standing the secret of their organization was to watch care- 

 fully the behaviour of individual labourers. My notebooks 

 are filled with observations of this kind, and I will quote a 

 few of the more interesting. I will describe, then, the 

 operations of a single ant whose movements I followed until 

 my curiosity was satisfied. 



One rainy day I noticed a labourer digging the ground 

 near the entrance to an ant-hill. It placed in a heap the 

 fragments it had scraped up and made them into little 

 pellets, which it deposited here and there over the nest. 

 Time after time it returned to the same place, apparently 

 with some definite object in view, judging from the eager- 

 ness and perseverance with which it worked. First I re- 

 marked a slight furrow excavated in a straight line, which 

 apparently represented the beginning of a road or gallery. 

 I watched every movement. The labourer next made the 

 furrow wider and deeper, clearing out its borders ; and after 

 a while I was satisfied that it intended opening up a road 

 leading from one of the stories to the chambers under- 

 ground. The path, about two or three inches in length, 

 and formed by a single ant, was open above and bordered 

 on each side by an embankment of earth ; the gutter-like 

 hollow of it was quite smooth, for the architect had removed 

 every superfluous particle of earth. I followed and under- 

 stood so well what this ant was doing, that I could nearly 

 always guess what its next proceeding would be and which 

 fragment it was about to remove. 



Beside the opening where the path ended there was a 

 second to which a road had to be made. The same ant 

 carried out this undertaking also, and without any assistance 

 made another furrow and opened a second path parallel to 



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