Field- Labourers 83 



A single colony of ants seldom covers less than two 

 square feet, and sometimes more than three ; and 

 as they generally choose a fresh place every year, 

 they really do a great deal towards clothing bare 

 places. 



The ants which work on the sandy moors seem to 

 keep to the same spot year after year, but their hillocks 

 are much taller, sometimes as much as four feet high 

 and a yard across at the base, all composed of soil 

 brought up from below mixed with refuse vegetable 

 matter, and in this way much of the unprofitable peat 

 is converted into good soil. 



In some parts of Ireland the work done by ants is, 

 if not larger, at least much more noticeable than that 

 done by worms, and it is believed that the space 

 covered by the work of the two is about equal. 



But in the tropics worms are, of course, quite power- 

 less during the greater part of the year, the soil being 

 either baked to a brick or dried to dust. In the burn- 

 ing deserts of Nubia a worm was never seen or even 

 heard of, and even in a tropical forest during nine 

 months of the year the soil is so hard as to be quite 

 unmanageable by its jaws. 



In the sub-tropical parts of South America and India, 

 worms swarm out in endless numbers when the rain 

 comes, but in the tropics proper, except in the moister 

 regions, they are on the whole few. Not one was seen 

 by Professor Drummond in Central Africa, even during 

 rain, and he suggests that their place is taken in these 

 parts by the termite, commonly, though erroneously, 

 called the white ant. 



The white ant lives underground, and being quite 

 defenceless, it has such a dread of exposure that whea 



