Architecture in the Animal Kingdom. 126 



are grown.^ Ants employ their building skill also to 

 protect themselves against enemies. They raise ram- 

 parts and barricades to keep off foreign invaders ; and 

 unwelcome visitors which cannot be got rid of in any 

 other way, are simply walled up with earth, and are 

 thus kept at a distance. Thus, in one of my observa- 

 tion nests of F. san guinea a salamander introduced 

 by me was in a short time entirely walled in. The 

 slaves (F. fusca), past masters in the art of building, 

 were most zealous in this work. An occurrence far 

 more amusing took place in a nest of Lasius Havus, 

 to whom I had given a Lomechusa strumosa as guest. 

 The small, yellow ants were not at all pleased with 

 the unwieldy fellow, and tried to get rid of his impor- 

 tunity in the following droll manner. From all quar- 

 ters they brought together pellets of earth and heaped 

 them up on the back of the unfortunate beetle, until 

 nothing was to be seen of him but the tips of his 

 feelers.^ 



Ants are even supposed to have their cemeteries 

 and burial-places. Superficial observers have circu- 

 lated many fables on this subject. In the book of a 

 certain Reverend White (Ants and their Ways, Lon- 

 don, 1883), I found a touching story by Mrs. Lewis- 

 Hutton, of Sidney, which is really too characteristic of 

 this kind of natural history to be passed over in silence. 

 One of her children had sat down on an ant-nest and 

 had been assailed by the enraged inhabitants. At the 



^) Moeller, "Die Pilzgaerten einiger suedamerikanischer Ameisen" 

 (Jena, 1893), and For el, "Zur Fauna und Lebensweise der Ameisen 

 im Columbisehen Urwald" (Mitteil. der Schweiz. Entom. Gesellsch.," 

 IX, 9th issue), p. 40(}. 



2) "Die internationalen Beziehungen von Lomechusa strumosa," 

 in "Biol. Centralbl.," 1892, p. 653. 



