MOUND-BUILDING ANTS. 211 



well anointed with a bitter vegetable oil to preserve them 

 from the attacks of the ants. 



A curious fact has been observed with regard to the 

 mound-building ants, whose nests contain certain chambers 

 which appear to be lumber rooms, some of them being filled 

 to the roof with husks, hulls, and decayed or mouldy seeds, 

 and then sealed up, presumably in order that the contents 

 might not be unpleasant to the inmates. Others are filled 

 with gravel, which Mr. McCook believes to be what remains 

 over after the roofing of the mounds. For these ants in- 

 variably cover the top of their habitations, which are some- 

 times thirty or forty yards round and from one to three feet 

 high ; and the covering consists of sand, gravel, small 

 pebbles, with little bits of limestone, fossils, coal, gold-dust, 

 fragments of valuable minerals, whatever, in fact, they may 

 happen to bring up in the course of their excavations. Ants 

 in India have been observed to ornament their nests with 

 garnets from the sea-sand ; and their relations in England 

 carry off bits of amber-like resin, whether for food or decora- 

 tion, we cannot say ; but there seems no reason whatever 

 why they should not like to have pretty things or even 

 curiosities about them, since they are so extremely human 

 in other respects. 



Another inhabitant of South America, the bizcacha, 

 which is like a large rabbit, collects bones, stones, thistle- 

 stalks, and hard lumps of earth, round the mouth of its bur- 

 row, and has been known to add a gentleman's watch to its 

 treasures ; while the satin birds of Australia erect bower-like 

 structures of twigs and branches, which they adorn with 

 coloured feathers, bones, and shells. These curious covered 



