H\ MEXOPTERA. 



another, to be brushed and washed by one or more of its comrades, who performed 

 the task by passing the limb between the jaws and tongue, finishing off by giving 

 the antennae a friendly wipe." Recreations, too, are not unknown to them; 

 running after each other in hide-and-seek, followed often by a rough-and-tumble 

 game. Stranger still, they hide away the dead bodies of their friends in chinks 

 and crevices far from the nest, and thus perform a sort of burial. That the 

 habit is more than the desire to be rid of what is useless, or may be injurious, 

 seems doubtful ; unless, indeed, such device lies at the root of all funeral customs, 

 a3 is not improbable. 



Of the British species, the largest is the red wood-ant (F. rufa). It 

 abounds in fir-plantations in the southern counties of England, and the huge 

 h?aps of pine-needles it gathers over its nest are familiar objects to frequenters 



3 



^hIE m mi 



1, honey-pot ant ; 2, parasol-ants on the march ; 3, Dwellings of husbandmen ants. (Nat. size. 



of the forests; while the size, ferocity, and numbers of the ants themselves 

 become a nuisance even before their ways have ceased to be amusing, ll the 

 nest be disturbed, the fumes of formic acid burst out full in the face of the 

 intruder, while the jaws of the enraged inhabitants render further operations 

 impossible. Numbers of nests, however, are annually ransacked of their pupa; 

 for young pheasants, which often seem surprised by the flavour of the ants, which 

 they pick up with the pupa3. Highways cross the paths in every direction 

 around the nest, and the ants may be seen coming and going continuously 

 throughout the day, bringing in twigs, caterpillars, and fragments of all kinds of 

 insects, to be safely stored away in the nest. Still larger is the Bercules ant 

 {Camponotus herculean us), which inhabits wooded highlands in continental Europe, 

 and constructs its nest in decayed tree-trunks. The female measures m0 re than 

 half an inch in length; and the insects, when swarming, gather in a cloud around 

 the base of some tree. In colour the body is glistening grey, while the tips of the 

 wings are yellow. The honey-pot ant (Myrmecocystus mexicanus), of which the 



