THE DUSKY ANT. 145 



The muscular power and the energy and endurance of the ant 

 are truly wonderful ; and if a human being, even if aided by tools, 

 could perform such a day's work as was achieved by a single ant 

 without them, he would be a wonder of the world. M. Huber had 

 the curiosity and good sense to devote the whole of a rainy day 

 to watching the proceedings of a single Dusky Ant. The insect 

 began by scooping out a groove in the earth, about a quarter of 

 an inch in depth, kneading the earth, which it removed into little 

 pellets, and placing them on each side of the groove, so as to form 

 a kind of wall. The interior of the groove was beautifully smooth 

 and regular, and when completed it looked very like a railway 

 cutting, and performed a similar office. After completing this 

 task, it looked about and found that there was another opening 

 in the nest to which a road must be made, and straightway set 

 to work upon a second sunken path of a similar character, paral- 

 lel to the first, and being separated from it merely by a wall of a 

 third of an inch in height. 



Compare the size of an ant with that of a man, and then see 

 how vast are the powers of so small a creature. Taking all 

 the calculations in round numbers, and very much to the disad- 

 vantage of the ant, we find that a single man, who would have 

 achieved a similar work in a single day, must have acted as fol- 

 lows: 



He must have excavated two parallel trenches, each of seven- 

 ty-two feet in length and four feet six inches in depth ; he must 

 have made bricks from the clay he dug out, and with them built 

 a wall along each side of the trenches, from two to three feet in 

 height and fourteen or fifteen inches in thickness ; and lastly, he 

 must have gone over the whole of his work again, and smoothed 

 the interior until it was exactly true, straight, and level. All 

 this work must also have been done without the least assistance, 

 and the ground must be supposed to be filled with huge boulders, 

 and covered with tree-trunks, broken logs, and other impediments. 



The most admirable subterranean architecture is perhaps that 

 of the Brown Ant (Formica brunnea), a species which is not very 

 commonly known in this country, and is probably confined to cer- 

 tain localities. Its habitation and the mode of its construction 

 have been carefully noted by M. Huber. 



This ant works mostly at night, and during light, misty rain, 

 the sunbeams being obnoxious, and heavy showers causing much 

 inconvenience. The nest is a most complicated structure, com- 



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