Field-Laborers 6^ 



of work outside, though their numbers gradually diminish 

 as we go further and further north and south. 



There are **ant cities" in Pennsylvania, each of which 

 contains more than sixteen hundred nests of various size, 

 the largest being fifty-eight feet round the base and forty- 

 two inches high, with galleries some sixty feet long lead- 

 ing to the feeding grounds. 



The muscular power of these ants is truly wonderful. 

 The loads they carry are twenty-five times their own 

 weight, and they carry them what, for their size, is an 

 enormous distance. It is as if a man of ordinary size 

 were to carry a weight of four thousand pounds from the 

 bottom of a coalpit to the top of the Great Pyramid. 

 And they have not merely to carry these loads, but first 

 to prepare them. 



The ant begins work by scratching with her forelegs 

 like a dog; later on she bites, cuts, or twists off pellets of 

 earth, during which process she often works like a coUier 

 on her back, and then she compresses the particles into a 

 ball and carries them out. The only implements she has 

 for her work are her mandibles, or first pair of jaws, 

 which are placed outside her mouth, each jaw being fur- 

 nished with seven teeth. These powerful jaws serve as 

 pick, shovel, crowbar, saw, axe, and cart, all in one, and 

 as the little creature grows old her teeth are gradually 

 worn down by the hard work they have done, just as a 

 workman's tools are worn. 



Thus not only is fresh soil continually exposed to the 

 action of air and rain, but ways are opened by which the 

 same air and rain may penetrate to the underlying rocks 

 and carry on the decaying process, as described in an 

 earlier chapter. Nor must it be forgotten that wherever 



