78 STRANGE DWELLINGS. 



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 most 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 brunned), a species which is not 

 very commonly known in this country, and is probably confined 

 to certain localities. Its habitation and the mode of its con- 

 struction 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- 

 posed of a series of stories, often reaching thirty or forty in 

 number, and generally being built in a sloping direction. These 

 stories are not composed of regular cells, like those of the bee, 

 wasp, and hornet, but of chambers and galleries of very irre- 

 gular form and dimensions, beautifully smoothed in the interior, 

 and about one-fifth of an inch in height. The walls are about 

 the twenty-fourth of an inch in thickness. The object of so 

 many stories is to be able to regulate the heat and moisture of 

 their establishments. If, for example, the sun is not very 

 powerful, and the instinct of the little insects tells them that 

 more heat is required in order to hatch the pupae which are 

 andergoing their metamorphosis, they take up the white burdens 

 and carry them into the upper chambers, where the heat is 

 greater than below. 



Again, if there should be a heavy rain, which floods all the 

 lower stories, nothing is easier for the inhabitants than to remove 

 themselves and brood into the upper sets of chambers, where 

 they will be secure from the inundation. On those days when 

 the sun is peculiarly hot, the ants secure a more equable tempe- 

 rature, by removing the young brood to the central flats, if they 

 can be so called, while they themselves can obtain the needful 

 moisture from the lower parts of the nest, to which the sunbeams 

 cannot penetrate. Were it not for this provision which they 



