HOMES OF SOCIAL INSECTS. 



339 



cens is made of leaves, cut and masticated until they become a 

 coarse pulp. Its diameter is about six inches ; it is suspended 

 among thickest foliage, and sustained not only by the branches 

 on which it hangs, but by the leaves, which are worked into 

 the composition, and in many parts project from its outer wall. 

 It may be at once distinguished from the nest of Cremoiogaster 

 by its smoothness and regularity of surface. A species of this 

 genus was discovered in Africa by Foxcroft, who observed that 

 whenever the ants were molested, they rushed out of their house 



FIG. 1. NEST OF A TREE ANT ((ECOPHYLLA SMABAGDINA) FROM INDIA. 



in such numbers that their pattering upon the papery covering 

 deluded him into thinking rain was falling on the leaves above. 



In the forests of Cayenne, the nests of Formica bispinosa are 

 remarkably like a sponge or an overgrown fungus. The down or 

 cottony matter enveloping the seeds in the pods of the Bombax 

 ceiba is used for their construction, vegetable fibers that are too 

 short to convert into fabrics, but which the ants contrive to felt 

 and weave into a compact and uniform mass, so dexterously that 

 all trace of the individuality of the threads is lost. The material 

 much resembles amadou, and like that substance is valuable for 

 stopping violent discharges of blood. In size the nests generally 

 have a diameter of eight or nine inches. The ant itself is little 

 and dark, and noted for two long, sharp spines on its thorax, one 

 on either side; hence its scientific name of bispinosa, from the 

 Latin, meaning two-spined. Popularly it has been called the 

 fungus ant. 



