484 



J. C. BRANNER GEOLOGIC WORK OF ANTS 



rounded at the top, and look like mile stones. Most of them are two or three 

 feet high, but some of them are as much as five or six feet high, and I saw 

 one that must have been twenty feet high and about as big round the middle 

 where it was enlarged. The outside is covered with a crust as thick as a 

 finger length, and no openings appear in it. The insides ^of some of these 

 nests that have been overturned showed a series of black horizontal floors 

 (planchers), one above another, close together, and pierced by round holes. 



"The termites do not build their nests all at once. They enlarge them in 

 proportion as the population of a colony increases, and the new parts are 

 readily distinguished by the earth freshly laid on." 



Sir Woodbine Parish speaks of "Corrientes and Paraguay, where whole 

 plains are covered with their dome-like and conical edifices, rising 5 and 6 

 feet and more in height."*^^ 



Figure 8. — White Ants' Nest of Earth in Matto Orosso, on the Plains of the Upper 



Paraguay 



Sketch by J. C. Branner 



In the region abont the headwaters of the Paraguay the nests of the 

 white ants are extremely abundant in favorable localities, and the forms 

 of the nests are different from those noted in other parts of tropical 

 America. The^ tall and very slender forms are especially noticeable in 

 the low, flat prairie lands south of Cuiaba. (See figure 8.) These 

 slender forms are known in that part of Brazil by the Indian name of 

 tacuru. 



Dr. Joao Severiano da Fonseca has the following in regard to ants in 

 the vicinity of the city of Matto Grosso :^^ 



^2 Sir Woodbine Parish : Buenos Ayres and the provinces of the Rio de la Plata, 2d ed. 

 p. 252. London, 1852. 



^' Viagem ao redor do Brazil, vol. !, p. 352. Rio, 1881. 



