220 ANTS. Chap. XI, 



ever, invariably spared. At Mayolo this kind of ant 

 was very abundant, and was a cause of much anxiety 

 to me. 



Tree Ant. — Now that I have tried to the best of 

 my abihties to give an account of what I call the 

 mushroom-building white ant, I will speak of another 

 species which lives in the forest, and which is often a 

 near neighbour ot the other. In the forest there is 

 a species which makes its hives or nests between the 

 ribs of the trunks of trees. The nests are from four 

 to seven feet long, and six to eight inches broad, and 

 are formed externally of several slanting roofs, one 

 above the other. The ants that make these struc- 

 tures have long black bodies and white heads, and 

 are unlike the mushroom-building ants. 



The structure begins from the ground in a some- 

 what irregular cylindrical piece of walling or build- 

 ing about a foot high, but varying to as much as 

 eighteen inches, and full of cells and galleries ; then 

 occurs the first slanting roof. The larger the struc- 

 ture, the more of these slanting roof-like projections 

 it possesses, and they become smaller towards the 

 top, the middle roof being the broadest ; sometimes 

 a few inches will separate one roof from the other ; 

 the roofs communicate with each other through the 

 cells by the same cylindrical piece of masonry ; the 

 material of which the whole is built is very thick, 

 hard, and impermeable to rain. The structure of 

 this ant is not common in the forest ; but ' having 

 found a nest in the prairie near Mayolo, I had not to 

 go far to study them. 



