NATURE NEAR LONDON 



have been swept together by half a dozen men 

 using long gardeners' brooms, and industriously 

 clearing the ground under the firs of the fragments 

 which had fallen from them. It appeared to be 

 entirely composed of small twigs, fir-needles, dead 

 leaves, and similar things. The highest part rose 

 about level with my chest say, between four 

 and five feet the heap was irregularly circular, 

 and not less than three or four yards across, with 

 sides gradually sloping. In the midst stood the 

 sapling birches, their stumps buried in it, the rub- 

 bish having been piled up around them. 



This heap was, in fact, the enormous nest or 

 hill of a colony of horse ants. The whole of it 

 had been gathered together, leaf by leaf, and twig by 

 twig, just as I had seen the two insects carrying the 

 little stick, and the third the brown leaf above itself. 

 It really seemed some way round the outer circum- 

 ference of the nest, and while walking round it was 

 necessary to keep brushing off the ants which 

 dropped on the shoulder from the branches of the 

 birches. For they were everywhere j every inch 

 of ground, every bough was covered with them. 

 Even standing near it was needful to kick the feet 

 continually against the black stump of a fir which 

 had been felled to jar them off, and this again 

 brought still more, attracted by the vibration of the 

 ground. 



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