216 Examples of the Wood-Ant By Jas. Hardy. 



Mr Bold says " it is not abundant in the vicinity of Newcastle ; 

 more plentiful in the woods at Gibside, Dilston, and Shotley 

 Bridge, and in immense numbers by the side of the Devil's 

 water above Dilston; sea-coast near Whitley, and in plenty 

 in Bothal woods." At Bothal, on the day when the Tyne- 

 side Club met at Bothal, " the ants were seen streaming up one 

 side of a large tree, and down the other. Those coming down 

 were each laden with a small green caterpillar." 



Mr Arkle has also sent some fragments of their nests, which 

 in this instance had been a congeries of twigs of birch and oak, 

 catkins, leaf-buds, and dwarf acorns of oak or birch ; foliage 

 and broken stalks of ferns ; portions of ling-heather, and a twig 

 of Polytrichum. 



Mr Smith says : — '•' This species is popularly known as the 

 Wood-Ant, from the circumstance of its forming the heaped-up 

 nests of leaves, sticks, and similar materials, usually in woods, 

 but colonies are frequently met with in other situations ; indeed 

 it sometimes takes possession of the decaying trunk of a tree, 

 and has been observed in a wall built of turf ; but woods are its 

 common habitat." (Cat. Hymenopt. Ins. Brit. Mus. Part. vi. p. 3.) 

 Latreille says that in France, it very commonly occurs in woods, 

 where it makes nests raised in the shape of a sugar-loaf or of a 

 dome, from two to three feet high, composed of a mixture of 

 leaves, straws, little twigs of different plants, of earth, of sand, 

 &c. When these habitations are disturbed there proceeds from 

 them a strong acid vapour. It is usually from this species that 

 chemists ex.tra.ct formic acid. In Sweden it collects the resin of the 

 junipers which are of frequent occurrence in that country ; and the 

 inhabitants gather from the nests this substance, which they are 

 in use to burn as a disinfectant, its odour also being not un- 

 pleasant. 



The Kidland shepherds are well aware of this colony. One 

 of them told me that he once placed an obstruction in one of the 

 numerous well-worn tracks, along which they filed going and 

 returning from and to their nests, when an extreme state of com- 

 motion ensued, of which he had not time to see the close. 



I formerly recorded the larger Yellow Ant (Formica umlrata) 

 as a Northumbrian species. Its stations were under stones on the 

 Sneer Hill, and in Langleyford vale, also on the Watch Law. 



