CARPENTERS AND WOOD-WORKERS 109 



We have alluded to these excavations as nests, 

 but they are really only nests in part, for the ants 

 can occupy only an infinitesimal part of the whole. 

 Insect structures intended solely for nests have 

 some relation to the size of the inmates, and passages 

 are cut allowing little more than free headway ; 

 but the scale of Lasius fuliginosus^ home is much as 

 though a man built his residence on cathedral lines. 

 Some of the Carpenter Ant's floors, indeed, remind 

 one of cathedral architecture with their supporting 

 pillars and arches. 



This ant builds up as well as pulls down, for 

 where a gallery or corridor has been cut out without 

 any apparent regard for particular uses, it will 

 afterwards erect partitions to divide it off into 

 small rooms. These partitions are elaborated out 

 of wood-dust mixed v^dth saliva and spread out in 

 thin sheets, so that it dries as cardboard. Every 

 part of the wood they have worked turns black, as 

 though it had been scorched, and the nest, as well 

 as the ants, gives off a pungent aromatic odour. 



Lasius niger, which usually makes its nest in the 

 ground, sometimes constructs it in rotten wood. 

 The Jet Ant, it should be observed, does not work 

 in such soft material. The wood selected is firm 

 and strong, and sometimes is that of a growing 

 tree. 



Of an American Carpenter Ant (Camponotus 

 fennsylvanicus) which normally makes its nests in 

 tree-stumps, much after the manner of our Jet 

 Ant, McCook has shown the readiness with which 



