spread mortar. Ants ma)' be said to 

 have the followingoccupations: House- 

 wives, nurses, teachers, spinners, men- 

 ials, marauders, soldiers, undertakers, 

 hunters, gardeners, agriculturalists, 

 architects, sculptors, roadmakers, min- 

 eralogists, and gold miners. 



Ants keep cows — the aphides — for 

 which they sometimes build stables and 

 place in separate stalls from the cocci, 

 which they also use. They make gran- 

 aries where they store ant rice. If the 

 grain begins to sprout they are wise 

 enough to cut off the sprout. If it gets 

 wet they have often been seen carry- 

 ing it up to the sunshine to dry and 

 thus prevent sprouting. The honey- 

 ant is herself a storehouse of food in 

 case of famine. This kind of ant has 

 a distension of the abdomen in which 

 honey is stored by the workers for 

 cases of need. They inject the honey 

 into the mouth of the ant. When it is 

 needed she forces it up to her lips by 

 means of the muscles of the abdomen. 

 It is said that the Mexicans like to cul- 

 ture honey ants and eat the honey 

 themselves. 



The leaf-cutting ant is the gardener. 

 It is devoted to growing mushrooms or 

 at least a kind of fungi of which it is 

 fond. This accounts for the beds of 

 leaves it carries to its nest, on which 

 the fungi develop. 



The Roman naturalist, Pliny, gives 

 an account of some ants in India which 

 extract gold from mines during the 

 winter. In the summer, when they re- 

 tire to their holes to escape the heat, 

 the people steal their gold. McCook 

 has found that we have ants who are 

 mineralogists, as they cover their hill 

 with small' stones, bits of fossils and 

 minerals, for which they go down like 

 miners more than a yard deep into the 

 earth. 



That some kinds of ants are archi- 

 tects has been cearly proven, for an 

 observer saw an ant architect order his 

 workmen to alter a defective arch, 

 which they did, apparently to suit his 

 views of how arches should be con- 

 structed! 



The ants who act as sculptors work 

 in wood. The red ants of the forest 

 build storied houses in trees with pil- 

 lars for support. There is a little 



brown ant which makes a house forty 

 stories high; half the rooms are below 

 ground. There are pillars, buttresses, 

 galleries, and various rooms with arched 

 roofs. This ant works in clay. If her 

 material becomes too dry she is com- 

 pelled to wait for moisture. 



The blind ant is a remarkable builder. 

 She makes long galleries above ground. 

 She does not use cement as some ants 

 do, so she builds rapidly and her struc- 

 ture is flimsy. 



The Saiiva ants of Brazil are skillful 

 masons. They construct chambers as 

 large as a man's head that have im- 

 mense domes, and outlets seventy 

 yards long. The Brazilians say that 

 the Indians, in cases of wounds, when 

 it was necessary to close them as with 

 stitching, used the jaws of the Saiiva 

 ant. The ant was seized by the body 

 and placed so that the mandibles were 

 one on each side of the cut. Then, 

 when pressed against the flesh, the ant 

 would close the mandibles and unite 

 the two sides of the cut as firmly as a 

 good stitch would do it. A quick twist 

 of the ant's body separated it from the 

 head. After a few days the heads were 

 removed with a knife and the opera- 

 tion was complete. 



In view of this we are tempted to 

 say that ants are also surgeons, but die 

 themselves instead of having their pa- 

 tients do so! 



A friend who has lived long in Bra- 

 zil tells me that the Saiiva ants are so 

 large the nuns in the convents use their 

 bodies to dress as dolls, making them 

 represent soldiers, brides and grooms, 

 and so forth. 



One species of ants do nothing ex- 

 cept capture slaves. These arc not 

 able to make their own nests, to feed 

 their larvae, or e\'en to feed themselves, 

 but are so helpless they would die if 

 neglected by their servants. There are 

 three species that keep slaves, but 

 these are not the only ones who go to 

 war, as the usually peaceful agricul- 

 tural ants sometimes get short of seed 

 and go forth to plunder each other's 

 nests. 



It is stated that a thousand species 

 of ants are known. No doubt there is 

 much of interest about each kind. The 

 "Driver Ant" is so choice of time and 



114 



