82 ON THE HABITS OF ANTS. [lect. 



heap of fine mould close to the glass, but just so far that 

 they could still not reach across. It would have been 

 quite easy for any ant, by moving a particle of earth for 

 a quarter of an inch, to have made a bridge by which 

 the food might have been reached, but this simple 

 expedient did not occur to them. On the other hand, I 

 then put some provisions in a shallow box with a glass 

 top, and a single hole on one side, and put some 

 specimens of Lasius niger to the food. As soon as a 

 stream of ants was at work, busily carrying supplies off 

 to the nest, and when they had got to know the way 

 thoroughly, I poured some fine mould in front of the 

 hole, so as to cover it up to a depth of about half 

 an inch. I then took out the ants which were actually 

 in the box. As soon as they had recovered from the 

 shock of this unexpected proceeding on my part, they 

 began to run all round and about the box, looking for 

 some other place of entrance. Finding none, however, 

 after a while they dug down into the earth just over the 

 hole, carrying off the grains of earth one by one, and 

 depositing them, without any order, all round at a 

 distance of from half an inch to six inches, until they 

 had excavated down to the doorway, when they 

 again began carrying off the food as before. This 

 experiment I repeated several times, always with the 

 same result. 



Again, I suspended some honey over a nest of Lasius 

 flavus, at a height of about half an inch, and accessible 

 only by a paper bridge more than ten feet long. Under 

 the glass I then placed a small heap of earth. The ants 

 soon swarmed over the earth on to the glass, and began 

 feeding.on the honey. I then removed a little of the earth, 



