98 Chapter III. 



the exterior organs of ants will also decide the nature 

 of their architecture. Thus e. g., the large Camponotus 

 ligniperdus (horse ants) and their allied species pos- 

 sess larger workers, whose huge head and strong 

 mandibles enable them to cut galleries in the wood of 

 decayed or even of sound trees. And therefore these 

 species are remarkable for zvood nests. Others again, 

 among them the jet black Lasius fuliginosus as the 

 only one of this kind among the emmets of northern 

 Europe, build paper nests by gnawing wood-fibre and 

 gluing it together with the sticky product of their 

 salivary glands. They thus produce a coarse, brown 

 papiermache, in which they establish their nests. Far 

 more perfect are the paper nests made by several 

 foreign ants, especially in South America, Madagas- 

 car and East India. They resemble irregular, brown 

 or grey-colored wasp-nests, suspended from or fast- 

 ened between branches of trees. Rev. A. Schupp, 

 S. J., sent me from Porto Alegre (South Brazil) 

 several paper nests of Cremastogaster side at a^ one of 

 which on arriving in Holland still contained several 

 thousands of live inhabitants. Similar nests of Cre- 

 mastogaster Schenki in Madagascar are reported by 

 Sikora to be sometimes of such size as to accommodate 

 a full-grown man. From these paper-nests we must 

 distinguish nests which are spun and do not consist of 

 a paper-like material but of a texture like cobwebs. 

 Such webs are constructed, according to Wroughton's 

 observations,^ by an East Indian ant Polyrhachis 

 spiniiiera for lining her earth-burrows. Other Indian 

 and Australian ants of the genera Oecophylla and Poly- 



1) "Our Ants," part I, p. 25 ("Journal of the Bombay Nat. Hist. 

 Soc," 1892). 



