148 NATURE STUDY 



The next step is to capture the ants and induce them to enter 

 the nest. A colony of ants with the queen is captured as before. 

 The queen may be distinguished from the workers by her larger 

 size. They may be brought home in a glass jar mingled with 

 the earth of their former nest. The whole mass of ants and dirt 

 is placed on top of the nest prepared as above. The ants, as this 

 dirt dries out, bury themselves deep in it. Scrape away and 

 remove all the dirt that you can from the mass from time to 

 time. This reduction of the dirt in which they are hiding leads 

 them to look for other quarters. They will be likely to discover 

 the door left for them, at which point they will begin to excavate 

 a tunnel into the prepared nest. This tunnel finally becomes a 

 system of tunnels and passages, forming their new home. In 

 this can be studied the wonderful life of the colony, by removing 

 the black cloth. The ants must be well fed and watered. Sugar, 

 bits of meat, crumbs of bread, and seeds of plants are foods of 

 different ants. This nest may be kept for a long time. For 

 fuller accounts consult Lubbock's "Ants, Bees and Wasps, " Inter- 

 national Scientific Series. There is an excellent description of an 

 ant's nest iu Comstock's Insect Life (Appleton) page 276. 



