How Animals Work. 



ing its leafy burden, returning to the nest. These 

 returning armies presented the most extraordinary 

 appearance, winding along a well-marked path leading 

 into the forest where the nest was situated, all hurry- 

 ing along, each individual carrying aloft a piece of leaf 

 which partly obscured the insect from view, and gave 

 to the mass the appearance of a hurrying green rivulet 

 or a green serpent. 



On arriving at the nest a large proportion of the 

 Saiiba Ants deposited their leafy burdens, and at once 

 returned to the tree for more, while others might be 

 seen to enter the nest still grasping their burdens. An 

 army of ants were busily working on top of the nest, 

 placing the pieces of leaf in position, and covering 

 them with layers of grains of earth so as to form a 

 sort of thatch to protect the interior of the nest from 

 rains. But this was not the only use which the Saiibas 

 were making of the fresh green foliage they were cutting 

 from the tree. Those ants which brought their leaves 

 within the nest were immediately relieved of their 

 burdens by small worker ants, who carried the frag- 

 ments into special underground chambers, and then 

 cut them into smaller pieces, which were then care- 

 fully licked over, worked up into pellets of pulp, and 

 massed together so as to form a regular heap or bed, 

 destined in the course of a few days to become pene- 

 trated and covered with the whitish mycetial threads 

 of a fungus upon which the ants are said to feed. This 

 fungus the ants cultivate in the most skilful manner, 

 keeping it cle#r of mouldiness, and making it produce 

 a modified form of growth in the shape of small white 

 masses, which form the chief food of the colony. The 



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