Nests of the Carpenter Ant 1 



By William T. Davis 



One day last spring, while walking through the woods at the 

 " Old Comp " near Richmond Valley, Staten Island, I discovered a 

 white pine tree about a foot in diameter that had been broken off 

 five feet eight inches from the ground. Upon examination it was 

 found that a nest of carpenter ants, Camponotus herculeanus penn- 

 sylvanicus De Geer, had occupied the tree ; that the insects had 

 made too many tunnels in the solid trunk; and that the tall pine, 

 which had stood a little over sixty feet high, had been weakened 

 in consequence and blown down by a passing storm. Thus the 

 ants had, with the aid of the wind, destroyed their own home. 



During the summer a more thorough examination of the nest 

 was made and the trunk was sawed into several sections. For a 

 little over four feet from the ground the ants had hollowed out the 

 interior of the tree, leaving only paperlike partitions that could 

 for the most part be removed with the hand. This portion of the 

 nest was four inches in diameter. Next above this there was a 

 constricted portion like the neck of a bottle, with only a few 

 galleries driven into the solid wood, and just above this the 

 galleries expanded into a wider area fifteen inches long and occu- 

 pying, as in the part below, about four inches of the diameter of 

 the tree. Above this last collection of galleries there was a single 

 fingerlike tunnel one-half inch in diameter and eight inches long, 

 occupying the center of the trunk. The entire nest was a little 

 over six feet in length. 



While I was sawing the log into sections, a few of the ants 

 were found in the least damaged part of the nest, and nineteen 

 days later an ant ran out from one of the chambers of that part 

 of the nest that was brought home. The ants are very loth to 

 leave their old home, as will again be noted further on. 



1 Presented November 16, 1907. 



